Asbestos fibres in beverages and drinking water

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos fibres in beverages and drinking water, by H.M. Cunningham, R. Pontefract (Nature, 1971).

The study

• Authors: H.M. Cunningham, R. Pontefract
• Journal: Nature
• Published: 1971;232(5309):332-3
• Cited by: 86 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This 1971 report from Canada's Food and Drug Directorate measured asbestos fibres in drinks and drinking water using electron microscopy. All brands examined contained asbestos fibres: twelve brands of Canadian beer, wine, sherry and port, six of American beer, six of European wine, vermouth and sherry, and two of South African sherry. Fibres in Canadian beer, sherry and water were identified as chrysotile. Some European samples contained amphibole fibres. Filtered tap water from Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal contained 2.0 to 4.4 million fibres per litre, and Ottawa tap water had fewer fibres than unfiltered Ottawa river water. Unfiltered tap water in Thetford Mines, Quebec, was drawn from a small lake in an asbestos mining area. It was exceptionally high, at 172.7 million fibres per litre in the article's table. Melted snow in Ottawa had 33.5 million fibres per litre. The authors said their counts were minimum estimates because many fibres were hidden in debris. They estimated the weight as about 1 microgram per 10 million fibres. They concluded that the hazard of swallowing asbestos was not yet resolved and needed further study.

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: laboratory survey measuring asbestos fibre counts in samples of beverages and water by electron microscopy
• Who was studied: Samples, not people: twelve brands of Canadian beer, wine, sherry and port, six of American beer, six of European wine, vermouth and sherry, and two of South African sherry. Also soft drinks, tap water from Canadian cities and towns (filtered and unfiltered), melted snow and Ottawa river water. No sampling dates are given.
• Exposure: Asbestos fibres in beverages and water. Fibres in Canadian beer, sherry and water were identified as chrysotile by electron diffraction. Some European samples contained amphibole asbestos fibres.
• Main results:
  • All beverage brands examined were found to contain asbestos fibres.
  • Filtered tap water from Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal contained from 2.0 to 4.4 million fibres per litre.
  • Ottawa tap water, drawn from the Ottawa river, had considerably fewer fibres than unfiltered river water (2.0 versus 9.5 million per litre in Table 1).
  • Unfiltered tap water in Thetford Mines, Quebec, drawn from a small lake in an asbestos mining area, was exceptionally high in fibre content (172.7 million fibres per litre in Table 1).
  • Melted snow from the Ottawa area had a high level of asbestos fibres (33.5 million per litre in Table 1). The authors took this as an indication of one source of asbestos in surface waters.
  • Among beverages in Table 1, ginger ale had the highest count, 12.2 million fibres per litre.
  • Most fibres in Canadian beer and filtered city water were under 1 micrometre long. Most wine samples, some American beer, and unfiltered melted snow and river water also had many fibres 1 to 15 micrometres long.
  • The amounts by weight were exceedingly small, about 1 microgram per 10 million fibres.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors stated that the hazard of orally ingested asbestos had not yet been resolved. They said further work was required on how far fibres penetrate the digestive tract, whether they travel to other organs, and their biological effects in tissues.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • Many fibres were hidden in clumps of debris, such as mineral matter in water and diatomaceous earth used to filter beer. The authors therefore said the reported counts must be considered minimum estimates.

Related studies

• Cancer incidence following exposure to drinking water with asbestos leachate — H.L. Howe, P.E. Wolfgang, et al. (1989)
• Engineering and operating approaches for controlling asbestos fibers in drinking water — G.S. Logsdon (1983)
• Asbestos in drinking water: a status report — J.A. Cotruvo (1983)
• Asbestos fibres in drinking water: are they carcinogenic or not? — C. Varga (2000)
• Analysis of amphibole asbestiform fibers in municipal water supplies — W.J. Nicholson (1974)
• Drinking water and cancer — K.P. Cantor (1997)

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