Clearance of asbestos bodies from the lung: a personal view

Our plain-English summary of Clearance of asbestos bodies from the lung: a personal view, by K.J. Arul, P.F. Holt (British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1980).

The study

• Authors: K.J. Arul, P.F. Holt
• Journal: British Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 1980;37(3):273-7
• Type of article: Case report
• Cited by: 12 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy.

Abstract

In histological sections asbestos bodies in human lungs may be either transparent, yellow, strongly Perls-positive structures as described in published reports, or opaque, black structures, the ferroprotein coating having been converted into haemosiderin. The transparent asbestos bodies fragment into segments; the black asbestos bodies disintegrate into a mass of haemosiderin granules that accumulate as dense deposits, particularly near to blood vessels. The presence of haemosiderin granules indicates that asbestos bodies have broken down. When a patient has died with a mesothelioma there is little evidence of phagocytic activity in many areas of the lung. When exposure to asbestos ceased many years before a mesothelioma developed there may be few recognisable asbestos bodies remaining in the lung.

In plain English

This article, which the authors called a personal view, described microscope slides of lung tissue from three people who died with mesothelioma after inhaling asbestos in different circumstances. The article did not name the type of asbestos fiber. One man had worked for 20 years with an asbestos firm. A second man had worked about 50 years as a plumber, mainly lagging pipes with asbestos. A woman had lived near an asbestos factory between ages 5 and 7 and had no known exposure in the following 37 years. The first man's lung showed many transparent, golden-yellow asbestos bodies (coated fibers) and heavy deposits of dark iron-containing granules (haemosiderin). The plumber's lung had scanty asbestos bodies, some yellow and some black. The woman's lung had few asbestos bodies, all black. Electron microscope analysis of tiny granules from her lung found iron as the only metal, which the authors took as confirming they were haemosiderin. No asbestos bodies were seen in the tumours. The authors concluded that haemosiderin granules may indicate that asbestos bodies once present have broken down, and cannot be ignored.

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: Descriptive histological study of lung tissue from three patients (case series), presented by the authors as a personal view
• Who was studied: Three patients who died with mesothelioma. Case 1 was a man who died aged 46. Case 2 was a man who died aged 70 with a mesothelioma of the pleura. Case 3 was a woman with a malignant mesothelioma that almost completely replaced the right lung. Location and dates of the cases are not stated.
• Exposure: Asbestos, fiber type not stated. Case 1 worked 20 years with an asbestos firm (described as probably heavy exposure). Case 2 worked about 50 years as a plumber, mainly lagging pipes with asbestos (described as probably light exposure). Case 3 lived near an asbestos factory between ages 5 and 7, then had no known exposure for 37 years.
• Main results:
  • Case 1 (20 years with an asbestos firm): many asbestos bodies were seen, all transparent and golden yellow.
  • Case 1: heavy deposits of black or dark brown haemosiderin granules, some shaped like asbestos bodies, were spread through the lung tissue.
  • Case 2 (plumber): asbestos bodies were scanty, some transparent and golden yellow, others black.
  • Case 3 (childhood exposure near a factory): few asbestos bodies were seen, all black and opaque, none transparent.
  • In digested lung tissue from case 3, X-ray analysis of particles smaller than 0.5 micrometre showed iron as the only metal, which the authors took as confirming the particles were haemosiderin. Larger particles were silicates.
  • Across the three cases, asbestos bodies were found only in lung tissue, not in the tumours.
  • Haemosiderin particles were sometimes inside macrophages (scavenger cells), but most sections had few macrophages.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that haemosiderin granules in the lung cannot be ignored when assessing asbestos exposure, because they may indicate that asbestos bodies originally present have broken down. The authors also proposed two routes by which asbestos bodies may be removed from the lung.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Lung cancer, Mesothelioma.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Asbestos Bodies, Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Clearance of anthophyllite fibers from the rat lung and the formation of asbestos bodies — A. Holmes, A. Morgan (1980)
• Personal exposure to asbestos dust during clearance certification — S. Bailey, A. Conchie, et al. (1988)
• Effects of cigarette smoke on the clearance of short asbestos fibres from the lung and a comparison with the clearance of long asbestos fibres — A. Churg, J.L. Wright, et al. (1992)
• Deposition pattern and clearance pathways of inhaled chrysotile asbestos — A.R. Brody, L.H. Hill (1981)
• Novel functional view of the crocidolite asbestos-treated A549 human lung epithelial transcriptome reveals an intricate network of pathways with opposing functions — J.M. Hevel, L.C. Olson-Buelow, et al. (2008)
• Iron associated with asbestos bodies is responsible for the formation of single strand breaks in phi X174 RFI DNA — L.G. Lund, M.G. Williams, et al. (1994)

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