Does qualitative examination of Elongated Mineral Particles (EMP) recovered from human and animal lungs provide reliable information on their carcinogenic and other effects?

Our plain-English summary of Does qualitative examination of Elongated Mineral Particles (EMP) recovered from human and animal lungs provide reliable information on their carcinogenic and other effects?, by B.W. Case (Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 2018).

The study

• Author: B.W. Case
• Journal: Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology
• Published: 2018;361:155-156
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This two-page article is a short overview, written as a presentation, of what the author and colleagues have learned from examining elongated mineral particles (EMP), including asbestos fibres, recovered from human lungs and occasionally from the lungs of sentinel animals. It is not a full research report. The author wrote that lung-fibre analysis methods vary widely between laboratories with no agreed methodology, that proper comparison controls rarely exist, and that fibres found in a lung cannot show when they arrived or what effects they had. Examples covered chrysotile, tremolite, crocidolite, amosite and "Libby Amphibole". The author reported seventeen unpublished mesothelioma litigation cases in which brake dust exposure was alleged. Amosite, crocidolite or both were found in 11 of the 17 cases, and chrysotile was detected in none. For mesothelioma cases from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, ten of fifteen cases examined by six laboratories had crocidolite in the lung. The author concluded that lung-fibre findings are most valid in a qualitative sense, and that going further "may be to stretch the boundaries of what we really know."

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: Short overview (presentation abstract) of the author's and colleagues' lung-retained fibre analyses, including a brief report of unpublished cases
• Who was studied: Human mesothelioma cases, including seventeen unpublished litigation cases with alleged brake dust exposure (all occurring since 2003) and fifteen cases from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; also dogs from El Dorado, California
• Exposure: Elongated mineral particles retained in lung tissue: chrysotile, tremolite, crocidolite, amosite and "Libby Amphibole"; sources discussed include brake dust, NY talc mines, an asbestos cement pipe plant and crocidolite scrap used as driveway surfacing, and the W.R. Grace vermiculite mine
• Main results:
  • In the seventeen unpublished mesothelioma litigation cases with alleged brake dust exposure, amosite, crocidolite or both were found in 11 of 17 cases. Chrysotile was detected in none, even at high transmission electron microscope (TEM) magnifications for short fibres (under 5 um).
  • Of fifteen Jefferson Parish (Louisiana) mesothelioma cases examined by six different laboratories, ten had crocidolite in the lung, with as little as one fibre detected.
  • Two different laboratories found high concentrations of long thin tremolite EMP in lung tissue from dogs living in an area of El Dorado, California.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that lung-retained EMP findings are most valid in a qualitative sense, and that going beyond what the presence of classes of EMP shows may stretch the boundaries of what is really known.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • Lung-retained fibre analysis techniques are highly variable between laboratories and have no agreed-upon methodology.
  • Proper control data for comparison rarely exist.
  • Fibres recovered from the lung cannot show when they arrived in the lung or what their effects have been.
  • Finding fibres in tissues other than the lung is problematic and may be due to cross-contamination.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Amosite, Chrysotile, Crocidolite, Tremolite.

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

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