Carcinogens and the workplace

Our plain-English summary of Carcinogens and the workplace, by R. Hawkins (CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, 1996).

The study

• Author: R. Hawkins
• Journal: CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians
• Published: 1996;46(4):255-6
• Type of article: Comment, Letter
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This item was a letter to the editor, not a research study, and it reported no new data. The author, Robert Hawkins, commented on an earlier article on cancer and the workplace by Stellman and Stellman in the same journal. The author objected that the article's Table 2 listed asbestos as though all forms were the same, and that Table 5, which identified chrysotile, gave no data on workers' smoking habits. The author argued that the article should have distinguished the types of asbestos, and described crocidolite ("blue" asbestos) and amosite ("brown" asbestos) as hazardous. The author also stated that chrysotile ("white" asbestos), even at lifetime concentrations as high as two fibers per cc of air, had not been shown to produce a significant hazard without cigarette smoking. The letter gave no source for this statement. In a printed reply, the original authors, joined by Paolo Boffetta, said asbestos was listed as an IARC Group 1 known human carcinogen. They said no form of asbestos is "safe" and that workers are almost always exposed to mixtures of asbestos types.

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 commenting on a previously published article, followed by the original authors' reply
• Exposure: Types of asbestos discussed in the letter: crocidolite ("blue"), amosite ("brown") and chrysotile ("white")
• Main results:
  • The author objected that Table 2 of the Stellman and Stellman article listed asbestos as though all forms of asbestos were the same, and that Table 5 identified chrysotile but gave no data on workers' smoking habits.
  • The author stated that crocidolite ("blue" asbestos) causes serious lung problems, and that it was used during World War II in ship construction and as a filter in Kent cigarettes.
  • The author described amosite ("brown" asbestos) as the other hazardous form, imported from Africa and used in a factory in Patterson, NJ (as printed).
  • The author asserted, without citing a source, that lifetime exposure to chrysotile at concentrations as high as two fibers per cc of air had not been shown to produce any significant hazard in the absence of cigarette smoking.
  • In their reply, the original authors stated that while some forms of asbestos may be more carcinogenic than others, none is safe.
  • The replying authors stated that workers are almost always exposed to mixtures of different types of asbestos.
• The authors' conclusion: The letter's author argued that the article should have listed the different types of asbestos, or at least the three types used in commerce, rather than treating asbestos as one substance.

Related studies

• The future excess fraction of occupational cancer among those exposed to carcinogens at work in Australia in 2012 — R.N. Carey, S.J. Hutchings, et al. (2017)
• Estimates of work-related cancers in workers exposed to carcinogens — F. Deschamps, M. Barouh, et al. (2006)
• The long-lasting legacy of industrial carcinogens: the lesson of asbestos. Irving J. Selikoff Memorial Lecture, 1995 — C. Maltoni (1997)
• Investigating cancer risks related to asbestos and other occupational carcinogens — J. Siemiatycki (2007)
• An approach to estimating the environmental burden of cancer from known and probable carcinogens: application to Ontario, Canada — S.L. Greco, E. MacIntyre, et al. (2020)
• After a Century of Research into Environmental Mutagens and Carcinogens, Where Do We Stand? — J.D. Vitorino, P.M. Costa (2023)

Browse more research in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, or return to medical research.