Asbestos kills: no matter how you cut the data

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos kills: no matter how you cut the data, by D.R. Smith, E.J. Beh (Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health, 2012).

The study

• Authors: D.R. Smith, E.J. Beh
• Journal: Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health
• Published: 2012;67(4):187-8
• Type of article: Editorial
• Cited by: 3 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This article is a guest editorial, not an original study, and it reports no new data of its own. The authors gave background on asbestos and on chest physician Irving J. Selikoff. They described Selikoff's 1981 study of around 1200 insulation workers in metropolitan New York as finding that most workers exposed for less than 20 years had normal chest films, while most exposed for 20 years or more had abnormal chest x-rays. This became known as the "20 year rule." The editorial introduced a companion paper by Duy, Beh and Smith in the same journal issue. That paper reanalysed Selikoff's published data with a new statistical measure, the Aggregate Association Index, which is meant for cases where only aggregate data are available. According to the editorial, the companion paper found a positive association between onset of asbestos exposure and asbestosis diagnosis when the cell values were known. It also found that the 20 year rule still held when some cell values were unknown. The editorial gives no numbers for these results. The authors concluded that this adds to a body of knowledge pointing to the conclusion "that asbestos kills."

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: Guest editorial introducing a companion statistical reanalysis paper published in the same issue (the editorial itself contains no original data)
• Who was studied: No population was studied in this editorial. It discusses a companion paper that reanalysed data from Selikoff's published study of around 1200 insulation workers in metropolitan New York (originally published in 1981).
• Exposure: Duration of occupational asbestos exposure: at least 20 years compared with less than 20 years (described as onset of exposure), in relation to a diagnosis of asbestosis
• Main results:
  • As described by the editorial, the companion paper (Duy, Beh and Smith, Part 3) found that when the cell values were known, the association between onset of asbestos exposure and asbestosis diagnostic status in Selikoff's data was positive. No figures are given in the editorial.
  • As described by the editorial, the companion paper found that even when some cell values were not known, the 20 year rule still held, using the Aggregate Association Index. No figures are given in the editorial.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that the finding adds to an existing body of knowledge all pointing in the same direction, that asbestos kills.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Asbestosis.

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