Asbestos exposures in public and commercial buildings

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos exposures in public and commercial buildings, by A.C. Upton, R.A. Shaikh (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1995).

The study

• Authors: A.C. Upton, R.A. Shaikh
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 1995;27(3):433-7; discussion 439-41
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This article was a commentary, not a research study, and reported no new data. The authors, of the Health Effects Institute-Asbestos Research (HEI-AR), responded to a 1993 paper by Sterling and colleagues. That paper had criticized the risk assessment in the HEI-AR Literature Review Panel's 1991 report on asbestos in public and commercial buildings. The authors wrote that the Panel had pointed out many uncertainties but concluded that the data as a whole were compatible with an approximately linear relationship between asbestos exposure and the risk of lung cancer and mesothelioma. They argued that almost no exposure data exist for household contacts of asbestos workers. They also disputed the three studies Sterling and colleagues cited as evidence against a linear relationship. The authors described how Panel members were chosen and reported their court testimony: seven had never testified, four had testified mainly for plaintiffs, four mainly for defendants, and two for both sides. The Institute was funded equally by the EPA and private sector groups. It announced its closure in January 1994 after the private groups failed to meet their commitments.

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: Commentary (a published reply to a critique of a 1991 literature review report); no original data
• Who was studied: No people were studied. The article responds to Sterling et al. (1993), who criticized the HEI-AR Literature Review Panel's 1991 report.
• Exposure: Airborne asbestos in public and commercial buildings, the subject of the HEI-AR report under discussion
• Main results:
  • The authors reported that the Panel concluded, despite many uncertainties, that the data taken as a whole were compatible with an approximately linear relationship between asbestos exposure and the risk of lung cancer and of mesothelioma.
  • The authors wrote that linear models are not always, nor necessarily, conservative at low dose levels.
  • The authors argued that almost no exposure data exist for household contacts of asbestos workers. To their knowledge, the only airborne measurements in workers' homes covered the homes of 13 miners.
  • On the rat intraperitoneal injection study cited by Sterling et al., the authors wrote that many doses were too high, so a saturation of mesothelioma response at about 80% was not surprising.
  • On the Seidman et al. cohort of short-term amosite factory workers, the authors wrote that the possibility could not be excluded that the unusually high lung cancer risk resulted from other exposures.
  • The authors stated that the Panel did calculate a separate risk for children.
  • Of the Panel members, seven had never testified, four had testified predominantly for plaintiffs, four predominantly for defendants, and two on both sides.
  • HEI-AR was supported jointly and equally by the EPA and private sector groups. It announced in January 1994 that it was closing because the private sector groups failed to fulfill their financial commitments.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that it was up to Sterling et al. to carry out a risk assessment for household contacts and to show that the Panel's estimates misrepresented the true risk. They also maintained that the Panel was as expert, unbiased and balanced as possible.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The authors acknowledged that the Panel did not explicitly consider household contacts, though they argued its overall exposure-management strategy would control that pathway.

Topics

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

Related studies

• Re: Asbestos exposures in public and commercial buildings — T.P. Sterling, W.L. Rosenbaum, et al. (1994)
• Comments on the Health Effects Institute-Asbestos Research (HEI-AR) report: "Asbestos in public and commercial buildings," with emphasis on risk assessment methods used — T.D. Sterling, C.W. Collett, et al. (1993)
• Asbestos in the air of public buildings: a public health risk? — J. Whysner, V.T. Covello, et al. (1994)
• Exposure of sheet-metal workers to asbestos during the construction and renovation of commercial buildings in New York City. A case study in social medicine — E. Drucker, D. Nagin, et al. (1987)
• Asbestos concerns in Australian buildings — T.K. Burki (2016)
• Asbestos-containing materials in New York City buildings — P. Lundy, M. Barer (1992)

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