Asbestos exposure during home renovation in New South Wales

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos exposure during home renovation in New South Wales, by R.A. Lemen, A.L. Frank, C.L. Soskolne, et al (The Medical Journal of Australia, 2014).

The study

• Authors: R.A. Lemen, A.L. Frank, C.L. Soskolne, S.H. Weiss, B.I. Castleman
• Journal: The Medical Journal of Australia
• Published: 2014;200(6):315
• Type of article: Letter, Comment
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This item is not a research study. It is a letter to the editor from Lemen and four colleagues, with a reply from two of the original authors, about a 2013 article by Park and colleagues on asbestos exposure during home renovation in New South Wales. The letter writers objected that Park et al. called the risk of disease from chrysotile asbestos controversial, citing work by Bernstein and colleagues that the letter writers said was funded by trade lobbies promoting chrysotile. They also said Park et al. cited outdated estimates, and that updated estimates put the mesothelioma risk from chrysotile exposure 10 times higher. All five letter writers disclosed that they had been retained and/or testified as expert witnesses in asbestos personal injury claims, usually at the request of plaintiffs. In reply, Johnson and Yates said they had written that recent World Health Organization reports identified no threshold for chrysotile but that the issue was still controversial. They said a reviewer had requested the Bernstein reference, and that the chrysotile debate was outside their paper's focus.

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) with the original authors' reply. No new data were presented.
• Who was studied: No people were studied. The letter comments on a 2013 Medical Journal of Australia article by Park and colleagues on asbestos exposure during home renovation in New South Wales.
• Exposure: Asbestos exposure in home renovation, with the dispute centred on how the risk of disease from chrysotile asbestos was described.
• Main results:
  • Argument by the letter writers, not a study finding: in describing chrysotile risk as controversial, Park et al. cited work by Bernstein and colleagues, which the letter writers said is funded by trade lobbies promoting chrysotile.
  • Argument by the letter writers, citing other researchers' updated estimates rather than data of their own: the mesothelioma risk from chrysotile exposure is 10 times higher than in the older estimates cited by Park et al.
  • Disclosure: all letter writers had been retained and/or testified as expert witnesses in asbestos personal injury compensation claims, usually at the request of plaintiffs.
  • Reply by Johnson and Yates: their article had stated that recent World Health Organization reports identified no exposure threshold for chrysotile, adding that the issue was still controversial.
  • Reply by Johnson and Yates: the Bernstein reference was not in their original manuscript and was requested by a reviewer.
  • Reply by Johnson and Yates: the chrysotile debate and other researchers' funding were outside the focus of their paper.
• The authors' conclusion: The letter writers concluded that the paper showed how inattention to reference selection and imperfect peer review can serve vested interests. The reply authors said the word 'controversial' was appropriately used and defended citing peer-reviewed papers to present a spectrum of opinion.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Asbestos Exposure.

Related studies

• Asbestos exposure during home renovation in New South Wales — E.K. Park, D.H. Yates, et al. (2013)
• Asbestos exposure during home renovation in New South Wales — A.R. Johnson, D.H. Yates (2014)
• Increasing incidence of malignant mesothelioma after exposure to asbestos during home maintenance and renovation — N.J. Olsen, P.J. Franklin, et al. (2011)
• Medicolegal aspects of the third wave of asbestos-related disease in Australia — J.R. Gordon, J. Leigh (2011)
• Renovation and renewal — A. Katelaris (2011)
• A study of fibrous aerosols in the home environment in Sosnowiec, Poland — J.S. Pastuszka, A. Kabala-Dzik, et al. (1999)

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