Asbestos in water

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos in water (Lancet, 1981).

The study

• Journal: Lancet
• Published: 1981;2(8238):132
• Type of article: Editorial
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 000717).

In plain English

The text supplied is not the cited editorial. It is a letter to The Lancet (August 22, 1981) replying to that editorial, written by Robert Murray of London and Kevin Browne of Cape Industries Ltd. The letter reported no new research. The writers said the editorial stated that the evidence linking swallowed asbestos fibres with excess deaths from gastrointestinal tumours was not yet conclusive, but that its tone implied a link was only a matter of time. They said they knew of no published feeding study that had produced a significant increase in malignant gut tumours. They cited an Edinburgh study of rats, then in press, which they said found no asbestos-related gut tumours. They noted that some heavily exposed worker groups had shown excess gut tumours, while other groups, and less heavily exposed people, had not. They faulted the editorial for leaving out negative findings from Connecticut townships. They argued that a California drinking-water study could be distorted by social class differences and by searching large data sets for associations. They concluded that such evidence should be viewed critically.

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 responding to a Lancet editorial (commentary, not original research)
• Who was studied: No population was studied. The letter discusses rat ingestion studies, human occupational cohorts, and drinking-water studies in Duluth, Connecticut townships and the San Francisco bay area.
• Exposure: Ingested asbestos, including asbestos in drinking water. No fiber type is named.
• Main results:
  • The writers stated that a study by the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh confirmed the absence of asbestos-related gut tumours in rats monitored for their whole lifespan.
  • The writers reported that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had said initial results of a U.S. National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences study, still awaiting final evaluation, did not detect adverse effects in test animals from asbestos in the diet.
  • The writers stated that several heavily exposed human cohorts showed an excess of gut tumours as well as lung and mesothelial tumours, but that other cohorts, and less heavily exposed people, showed no excess.
  • The writers said the editorial omitted negative results such as those from the longer-exposed Connecticut townships.
  • The writers argued that the Californian data of Conforti et al. could reflect unequal geographic distribution of social classes and the large-scale computer searching of population data for positive associations.
  • The writers stated that, on the figures given by Conforti et al., the probability that asbestos in drinking water prevents cancer of the corpus uteri was a thousand times greater than the probability that it causes cancer in any organ listed.
• The authors' conclusion: The writers concluded that evidence from the same source that is a thousand times less convincing should be regarded equally critically.

Related studies

• Asbestos in public water supplies: discussion of future problems — J.P. Hills (1979)
• Asbestos-contaminated drinking water: its impact on household air — J.S. Webber, S. Syrotynski, et al. (1988)
• Cancer of the gastrointestinal tract and exposure to asbestos in drinking water among lighthouse keepers (Norway) — K. Kjaerheim, B. Ulvestad, et al. (2005)
• Ingested mineral fibers: elimination in human urine — P.M. Cook, G.F. Olson (1979)
• The contamination of Lake Superior with amphibole gangue minerals — A.M. Langer, C.M. Maggiore, et al. (1979)
• Distribution of chemical carcinogens in aquatic environments — H.F. Kraybill (1976)

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