Canadian academics call for asbestos report to be published

Our plain-English summary of Canadian academics call for asbestos report to be published, by D. Spurgeon (BMJ, 2008).

The study

• Author: D. Spurgeon
• Journal: BMJ
• Published: 2008;336(7656):1269
• Type of article: News
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

In plain English

This is a news report, not a research study. It appeared in the BMJ news section on 7 June 2008 and was written by David Spurgeon in Quebec. It reported that the chairman and another member of a panel of seven international experts, engaged by Canada's federal health department to examine cancer risks associated with asbestos, had complained to the health minister, Tony Clement, about delays in publicly releasing the panel's report. The report looked at a form of asbestos that Canada promotes worldwide; the article names chrysotile. The panel chairman, Trevor Ogden, and panel member Leslie Stayner of the University of Chicago wrote that a House of Commons statement by André Bellavance, a Bloc Québécois MP, implied the report supports controlled use of chrysotile rather than a ban. They said the panel did not consider that question. Mr Bellavance said the report did not take into account recent studies on the safe use of chrysotile. Mr Clement said the report would be made public once officials had reviewed it. The news item did not describe the panel's findings. The panel members said they were constrained not to reveal them.

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: news report (BMJ news item), not a research study
• Who was studied: no study population; the item concerns a panel of seven international experts engaged by Health Canada to examine cancer risks associated with asbestos
• Exposure: chrysotile asbestos, described as a form of asbestos that Canada promotes worldwide
• Main results:
  • The panel chairman and another panel member complained to the health minister, Tony Clement, about delays in publicly releasing the panel's report
  • Trevor Ogden and Leslie Stayner said André Bellavance's statement implied the report supports controlled use of chrysotile as opposed to a ban, and that the panel did not consider this question
  • Panel members said they were constrained not to reveal what is in the report
  • Mr Bellavance said the panel's report does not take into account recent studies on the safe use of chrysotile
  • The health minister said the report would be made public once his officials had reviewed it

Related studies

• Should Canadian health care professionals support the call for a worldwide ban on asbestos? — J. Siemiatycki (2001)
• Mortality and cancer morbidity in a cohort of Canadian petroleum workers — R.J. Lewis, A.R. Schnatter, et al. (2003)
• Risk-based indicators of Canadians' exposures to environmental carcinogens — E. Setton, P. Hystad, et al. (2013)
• Asbestos is still with us: Repeat call for a universal ban — C. Ramazzini (2011)
• Asbestos in drinking water: a Canadian view — P. Toft, M.E. Meek (1983)
• Malignant pleural mesothelioma: Comparison of surgery-based trimodality therapy to medical therapy at two tertiary academic institutions — F. Larose, N. Quigley, et al. (2021)

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