Asbestos and ship-building: fatal consequences

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos and ship-building: fatal consequences, by J. Hedley-Whyte, D.R. Milamed (The Ulster Medical Journal, 2008).

The study

• Authors: J. Hedley-Whyte, D.R. Milamed
• Journal: The Ulster Medical Journal
• Published: 2008;77(3):191-200
• Type of article: Historical article
• Cited by: 11 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Free full text

Abstract

The severe bombing of Belfast in 1941 had far-reaching consequences. Harland and Wolff was crippled. The British Merchant Ship Building Mission to the U.S.A. was being constrained by the U.K. treasury. On being told of the Belfast destruction, the British Mission and the United States Maritime Commission were emboldened. The result was 2,710 Liberty Ships launched to a British design. The necessary asbestos use associated with this and other shipbuilding, after a quarter century or more latency, is a genesis of malignancy killing thousands. Reversal of studies on asbestos limitation of fire propagation was crucial to Allied strategic planning of mass-fires which resulted in the slaughter of one to two million civilians. Boston and Belfast institutions made seminal discoveries about asbestos use and its sequelae.

In plain English

This article is a medical history, not a study that collected new data. The authors traced how the German bombing of Belfast in 1941, which badly damaged the Harland and Wolff shipyard, connected to a British shipbuilding mission to the United States and the launch of 2,710 Liberty ships to a British design. They described a 1922 US Navy specification of South African chrysotile for submarine gaskets, insulation, packing and tape, and of Transvaal amosite for insulation. They drew on published figures for asbestos use, for example US use averaging 783 million pounds a year during World War II. Citing US government surveillance data, they reported that in 1999, 2485 people in the US died of malignant mesothelioma and 1,265 of asbestosis without apparent malignancy. They showed maps of US mesothelioma death rates beside Liberty shipyard locations, and of Northern Ireland pleural cancer death rates, and pointed to high rates near the yards and near Belfast. The authors concluded that asbestos use in this and other shipbuilding, after a quarter century or more latency, is a genesis of malignancy killing thousands.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Medical history: a historical narrative drawing on published sources and one author's personal recollections, with no original data collection or statistical analysis
• Who was studied: No study population. The article covers asbestos use in shipbuilding during World War II, centred on the 1941 bombing of Belfast (Harland and Wolff) and the US Liberty ship programme. It also gives later asbestos-related death figures from other sources for Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the US.
• Exposure: Asbestos used in shipbuilding. From 1922 the US Navy specified South African chrysotile for gaskets, insulation, packing and tape, and Transvaal amosite for light-weight, high insulation in new submarines.
• Main results:
  • Citing published sources, the authors reported that US asbestos use averaged 783 million pounds a year during the World War II years.
  • 2,710 Liberty ships took part in World War II. Henry Kaiser's companies built 43% of them.
  • Citing US surveillance data for 1999, the authors reported 2485 US deaths from malignant mesothelioma and 1,265 from asbestosis without apparent malignancy.
  • Citing other sources, the authors reported that 60-92 persons in Northern Ireland currently die each year from the effects of asbestos inhalation, and about 1,600 a year in the rest of Great Britain.
  • On a map of 1999 US county mesothelioma death rates marked with the Liberty shipyard locations, the authors pointed to high rates of asbestos-related disease around the yards. This was a visual comparison, not a statistical analysis.
  • On a map adapted from a published Northern Ireland study (male standardized mortality rates, 1985-1994), the death rate from pleural cancer, generally mesothelioma, was highest close to Belfast, where Harland and Wolff was located.
  • Citing US surveillance data, the authors stated that the proportional mortality rate for asbestosis among former shipyard workers was sixteen times the average of other occupations. A figure legend describes this same figure differently (see text problems).
  • A Queen's University (Belfast) pathology report described thirteen cases of mesothelioma in 1958.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that the asbestos use needed for this and other shipbuilding, after a quarter century or more latency, is a genesis of malignancy killing thousands.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Mesothelioma, Shipyards and maritime work.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Liberty Ship, Latency.

Related studies

• Asbestos, mesothelioma and the legacy of shipbuilding in Belfast — P.J. Morrison (2008)
• Historical state of knowledge of the health risks of asbestos posed to seamen on merchant ships — D.G. Dodge, B.D. Beck (2016)
• Radiological evidence of asbestos disease among ship repair workers — I.J. Selikoff, W.J. Nicholson, et al. (1980)
• Assessment of the future mesothelioma disease burden from past exposure to asbestos in ship recycling yards in India — R. Singh, J.W. Cherrie, et al. (2020)
• Asbestos-related disease in Bangladeshi ship breakers: a pilot study — M.N. Courtice, P.A. Demers, et al. (2011)
• Parenchymal asbestosis due to primary asbestos exposure among ship-breaking workers: report of the first cases from Bangladesh — V. Muralidhar, M.F. Ahasan, et al. (2017)

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