Asbestos as an industrial health hazard

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos as an industrial health hazard (The Medical Journal of Australia, 1973).

The study

• Journal: The Medical Journal of Australia
• Published: 1973;1(3):92
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 002376).

In plain English

This unsigned editorial in the Medical Journal of Australia reported no new research. It said asbestos was a major industrial health problem and reprinted a statement issued after meetings on asbestos and cancer held by the International Agency for Research on Cancer with the Pneumoconiosis Unit of Britain's Medical Research Council. Participants came from 20 countries. The statement said studies in many countries showed no possible doubt of a direct relationship between inhaling asbestos dust and certain cancers of the lung, pleura and peritoneum. It said risk depended on fibre shape, length and above all diameter. It placed asbestos processing workers, especially in textile spinning, at greatest risk. Workers handling wet asbestos, and miners and millers, were placed slightly lower. It said the general population did not appear to be at risk, but past cancers had occurred in people living downwind of factories and in people in workers' homes. It said there may be a gap of 20 to 40 years between exposure and cancer, and the meeting reported a far greater danger for heavy smokers. No disease rates were given.

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: Unsigned editorial that reprints a statement issued by an international meeting; not an original study
• Who was studied: No study population. The editorial reports a statement from a series of sessions organized by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (World Health Organization) jointly with the Pneumoconiosis Unit of the Medical Research Council of Great Britain, attended by participants from 20 countries
• Exposure: Inhalation of asbestos dust in general (no fiber types named), in asbestos processing including textile manufacturing, in industries using asbestos in wet form, in mining and milling, in house-building and ship-building, and outside the workplace
• Main results:
  • According to the statement, studies in many countries showed no possible doubt of a direct relationship between inhaling asbestos dust and certain cancers of the lung, the pleura and the peritoneum
  • The statement said the level of risk depends on the shape, length and above all the diameter of the fibres, which are most dangerous when straight and very fine
  • The statement said workers using asbestos in a wet form (hardboard, joints, brake linings, filters, asbestos cement) were likely slightly less at risk than processing workers, and that mining and mill workers were at risk but at a level slightly lower than processing workers
  • The statement said the population at large did not appear to be at risk, because urban air asbestos concentrations were about 10,000 times lower than the level considered acceptable for industry workers
  • The statement said that in the past, cancers attributable to asbestos had appeared in people living downwind of asbestos processing factories, and lung cancers in other people living in houses where factory workers brought dust home on their working clothes
  • The statement said there may be a gap of 20 to 40 years between exposure and cancer, so current risk levels must be interpreted with great prudence
  • The meeting reported a far greater danger of lung cancer for heavy smokers exposed to asbestos dust, while noting a risk also for non-smokers
• The authors' conclusion: The editorial stated that asbestos is a major industrial health problem. It relayed the meeting's view that workers' conditions had much improved, and the meeting's research recommendations: studies of how asbestos causes cancer, cancer control and protection methods, measuring asbestos in human tissues, and standardized diagnostic criteria

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Lung cancer, Mesothelioma, Peritoneal mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Computer simulation of industrial hazards — E.G. Knox (1973)
• Carcinogenic industrial air pollution and postmenopausal breast cancer risk in the National Institutes of Health AARP Diet and Health Study — J.M. Madrigal, C.N. Pruitt, et al. (2024)
• Industrial hygiene and occupational health studies in Australian (New South Wales) shipyards — A. Bell (1976)
• Industrial workers' health and environmental pollution under the new international division of labor: the Taiwan experience — M.S. Chen, C.L. Huang (1997)
• Some personal observations on industrial health in the United States of America — B. Harvey (1954)
• Late industrial development and occupational health in southern Italy — G. Assennato, L. Bisceglia, et al. (2005)

Browse more research in The Medical Journal of Australia, or return to medical research.