Commentary: Exposure and mortality among chrysotile asbestos workers. American Journal of Industrial Medicine 4:421-433, 1983

Our plain-English summary of Commentary: Exposure and mortality among chrysotile asbestos workers. American Journal of Industrial Medicine 4:421-433, 1983, by M.M. Finkelstein (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1984).

The study

• Author: M.M. Finkelstein
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 1984;5(5):407-10
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This is a commentary, not a new study, and it reported no new data. The author, Murray Finkelstein, raised concerns about a 1983 paper by Dement and colleagues on exposures and mortality among chrysotile asbestos textile workers. That paper used a method borrowed from studies of radon and lung cancer in uranium miners, in which workers move into higher exposure categories as their exposure builds up. The author argued this method would assign too many deaths and too few years at risk to the higher categories, overstating how steeply risk rises with exposure. The author also argued that years counted in higher categories come longer after first exposure, and could find no sign that the paper adjusted for this. Without adjustment, the author argued, the slope would be biased upward, though the author allowed that adjustment might make little difference. The author wrote that the textile workers' mortality had differed substantially from that of chrysotile miners and millers. The author asked Dement and colleagues to redo the calculations with a different method. Their reply begins in the text but is cut off.

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: Commentary (letter) criticizing the methods of a previously published study; no original data
• Who was studied: No population was studied. The commentary discusses Dement and colleagues' 1983 study of chrysotile asbestos textile workers.
• Exposure: Chrysotile asbestos exposure among textile workers (in the study being criticized), compared in passing with chrysotile miners and millers
• Main results:
  • The author argued (an argument, not a measured finding) that the method of moving workers into higher exposure categories as exposure accumulates would attribute too many deaths and too few person-years of risk to higher exposure categories, overestimating the slope of the exposure-response curve.
  • The author argued that years at risk in higher exposure categories have longer latency. Without adjustment for these differences in latency, the estimated exposure-response slope would be biased upward.
  • The author stated that he could find no indication in the Dement et al. report that latency had been adjusted for in the exposure-response analysis.
  • The author wrote that results from the Quebec chrysotile mining study cannot be readily generalized to other workplace environments such as textile work.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the analytic method and the apparent failure to adjust for latency may both lead to overestimates of the exposure-response slope. The author hoped Dement and colleagues would repeat the calculations with a different methodology.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author acknowledged that adjusting for latency might have a negligible effect on the final result.

Topics

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

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Chrysotile.

Related studies

• Regarding "absence of radiographic asbestosis and the risk of lung cancer among asbestos-cement workers: extended follow-up of a cohort", by Murray Finkelstein, American Journal of Industrial Medicine 2010 — R.M. Ross (2011)
• Asbestos, lung cancer and mesothelioma in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine — A. Newman Taylor (2009)
• Dust exposure and mortality in an American chrysotile textile plant — A.D. McDonald, J.S. Fry, et al. (1983)
• Dust exposure and mortality in an American chrysotile asbestos friction products plant — A.D. McDonald, J.S. Fry, et al. (1984)
• Increased lung cancer mortality among chrysotile asbestos textile workers is more strongly associated with exposure to long thin fibres — D. Loomis, J.M. Dement, et al. (2012)
• Dust exposure and mortality in an American factory using chrysotile, amosite, and crocidolite in mainly textile manufacture — A.D. McDonald, J.S. Fry, et al. (1983)

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