Asbestos in public water supplies: discussion of future problems

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos in public water supplies: discussion of future problems, by J.P. Hills (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1979).

The study

• Author: J.P. Hills
• Journal: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
• Published: 1979;330:573-7
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy.

In plain English

This article was a discussion piece, not a scientific study. It was written by an attorney who had represented the Federal government in the Reserve Mining Company case over amosite asbestos in the drinking water of Duluth, Minnesota, and it reported no new data. The author argued that people tend to dismiss long-term cancer risks they cannot control. The author described a "reciprocal risk theory" drawn from the Reserve Mining and Ethyl Corporation court cases: if a large number of people are exposed to a serious illness such as cancer, action should be taken even when the probability of harm is remote or speculative. The author argued that studies of the Duluth population would probably reveal nothing, because that population sits within a larger one that already had the nation's highest stomach cancer rate. The author cited criminal indictments in three cases not involving asbestos as examples of companies withholding or misrepresenting scientific data. The author stated that, in the author's experience, the asbestos industry had been a leader in misusing scientific data. The author concluded that the main future problem with asbestos-contaminated drinking water was societal inertia.

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 / discussion paper by an attorney; no original data
• Who was studied: No population was studied. The paper discusses the drinking water supply of Duluth, Minnesota.
• Exposure: Amosite asbestos in the Duluth, Minnesota public water supply, the subject of the Reserve Mining Company case
• Main results:
  • The author described and advocated a "reciprocal risk theory": when many people are exposed to a possible serious illness such as cancer, action should be taken even if the probability of harm is remote or speculative.
  • The author argued that the Duluth population was a flawed natural experiment that would probably reveal nothing, because the larger population containing it already had the highest stomach cancer rate in the nation.
  • The author cited three non-asbestos criminal indictments (Kepone discharges into the James River by Allied Chemical, mercury discharges into the Niagara River by Olin Corporation, and withheld tumor data on heptachlor and chlordane by Velsicol Chemical Corporation) as examples of misrepresentation and misuse of scientific data.
  • The author stated that, in the author's experience, the asbestos industry had been a leader in misusing scientists and scientific data.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the principal problem to be expected with asbestos-contaminated drinking water is societal inertia, meaning that society will continue to do nothing.

Related studies

• Asbestos-contaminated drinking water: its impact on household air — J.S. Webber, S. Syrotynski, et al. (1988)
• Cancer incidence in relation to asbestos in drinking water in the Puget Sound region — L. Polissar, R.K. Severson, et al. (1982)
• A case-control study of asbestos in drinking water and cancer risk — L. Polissar, R.K. Severson, et al. (1984)
• Asbestos in water — R. Murray, K. Browne (1981)
• Asbestos in drinking water and cancer — K.D. MacRae (1988)
• Effect of population density on the results of the study of water supplies in five California counties — P.M. Conforti (1983)

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