Asbestos awareness

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos awareness, by C. Fry (British Dental Journal, 2008).

The study

• Author: C. Fry
• Journal: British Dental Journal
• Published: 2008;204(9):476-7
• Type of article: Letter
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This letter to the editor of the British Dental Journal was not a research study and presented no original research. The author, a Sheffield solicitor whose firm acts for people with occupationally related conditions, wrote in response to a BDJ obituary of 22 December 2007 for Mr Richard Bourne, who, the letter said, had been diagnosed with asbestos-induced mesothelioma. The letter stated that asbestos was known to be present in the tunnels of University College Hospital London, where many thousands of people may have worked. It cited a May 2006 DEFRA report as saying the UK faces between 20,000 and 40,000 new cases of work related cancers every year, with potential annual costs of between £29.5 billion and £59 billion. The author also wrote that settlements in the firm's asbestos related claims for people working in industry had reached around £1 million in the last year alone. Its stated purpose was to raise awareness of work related cancers. It encouraged concerned readers to take action and offered the firm's free initial advice. It named no asbestos fiber type.

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: Letter to the editor (correspondence). Not a research study, with no original research.
• Who was studied: No population was studied. The letter refers to one person, Mr Richard Bourne, whose BDJ obituary (22 December 2007) reported a diagnosis of asbestos-induced mesothelioma. It also speculates about people who worked in the tunnels of University College Hospital London.
• Exposure: Asbestos said to be present in the tunnels of University College Hospital London. No fiber type, product or dose is given.
• Main results:
  • This is not a finding of the letter itself. The author cited a DEFRA report (May 2006) as stating that the UK faces between 20,000 and 40,000 new cases of work related cancers every year, with potential annual costs to the economy of between £29.5 billion and £59 billion.
  • The author stated that, for the firm's asbestos related claims for people working in industry, settlements in the last year alone had reached in the region of £1 million.
• The authors' conclusion: The author wrote that the letter's purpose was to raise awareness of work related cancers. The letter said that readers with concerns about their own health after reading the obituary should be encouraged to take action, and it offered free initial advice from the firm.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Asbestosis, Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• A history of awareness of asbestos disease and the control of occupational asbestos exposures in The Netherlands — L. Burdorf, P.H. Swuste, et al. (1991)
• Exposure of UK industrial plumbers to asbestos, Part II: Awareness and responses of plumbers to working with asbestos during a survey in parallel with personal sampling — D. Bard, G. Burdett (2007)
• Asbestos knowledge and awareness level in central part of Anatolia — S. Metintas, G. Ak, et al. (2017)
• Channels and vehicles of communication: the asbestos awareness campaign — V.S. Freimuth, J.P. Van Nevel (1993)
• Greek employee awareness of carcinogenic exposure — C. Chatzis, K. Karvounis, et al. (2004)
• From Awareness to Action: The Community of Sarnia Mobilizes to Protect its Workers from Occupational Disease — D. Kramer, K. McMillan, et al. (2015)

Browse more research in British Dental Journal, or return to medical research.