Asbestos-related disease in the jewelry industry

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos-related disease in the jewelry industry, by D.G. Kern, H. Frumkin (Journal of Occupational Medicine., 1990).

The study

• Authors: D.G. Kern, H. Frumkin
• Journal: Journal of Occupational Medicine.
• Published: 1990;32(2):87
• Type of article: Comment, Letter
• 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. 000023).

In plain English

This item was a letter to the editor, not a new study. The authors were responding to an August 1989 exchange in the same journal. In it, a reader had asked whether a retired woman's pleural mesothelioma might be related to her past jewelry-industry work, and the journal's ACOM Committee on Occupational Medical Practice had replied that there was no known association. The authors described two cases of asbestos-related disease in jewelry workers that they had reported earlier. These workers hand-mixed asbestos powder, plaster of paris and water to make soldering boards. Both had calcified pleural plaques on chest X-rays, and one had gross pulmonary asbestosis. Soldering boards from the two work sites contained 25% to 45% chrysotile asbestos. The authors stated that major manufacturers had switched to asbestos-free boards 5 to 10 years earlier, but smaller plants still used asbestos forms. They also cited another group's report on Native American jewelry makers and a Rhode Island study that found no mesotheliomas among 3141 deceased jewelry workers. The authors concluded that there is a potential risk of asbestos-related diseases in jewelry manufacturing.

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 describing two previously reported case reports and citing other published work
• Who was studied: Two jewelry-industry workers whose cases the authors had reported earlier (Am J Ind Med 1988). The letter gives no location or dates for these two cases.
• Exposure: Soldering boards that the workers hand-mixed from asbestos powder, plaster of paris and water. Workers rubbed boards together to remove old impressions. Ground-up asbestos sheets were used when asbestos powder was unavailable. The boards contained chrysotile asbestos.
• Main results:
  • Both patients had calcified pleural plaques on chest radiographs.
  • One of the two patients had gross pulmonary asbestosis.
  • Soldering boards from the two work sites contained 25% to 45% chrysotile asbestos.
  • The authors learned that major jewelry manufacturers had converted to asbestos-free soldering boards 5 to 10 years earlier, but asbestos soldering forms were still used in a number of smaller plants.
  • Cited from another report (Driscoll and colleagues): Native American craftspeople who produce jewelry used asbestos 'pounding boards' to insulate worktables, and clapping or rubbing these boards together resulted in substantial airborne asbestos exposure.
  • Cited from another study (Dubrow and Gute): no mesotheliomas were found among 3141 decedents in a proportionate mortality study of Rhode Island jewelry workers.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that the two reports (their own and the Native American report) indicate a potential risk of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases in jewelry manufacturing.

Topics

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

Related studies

• Asbestos-related disease in the jewelry industry: report of two cases — D.G. Kern, H. Frumkin (1988)
• Malignant mesothelioma in the jewelry industry — D.G. Kern, K.T. Hanley, et al. (1992)
• An investigation into asbestos related disease in the dental industry — C. Fry (2009)
• Double standards: the multinational asbestos industry and asbestos-related disease in South Africa — J. McCulloch, G. Tweedale (2004)
• Compensation for Asbestos-Related Diseases in Japan: Utilization of Standard Classifications of Industry and Occupations — K. Sawanyawisuth, S. Furuya, et al. (2017)
• Asbestos-induced lung injury among Danish jewelry workers — M. Døssing, S.W. Langer (1994)

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