Environmental asbestos

Our plain-English summary of Environmental asbestos, by K. Browne (Lancet, 1991).

The study

• Author: K. Browne
• Journal: Lancet
• Published: 1991;338(8772):949
• Type of article: Comment, Letter
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 004457).

In plain English

This was a letter to The Lancet, not a research study. The author responded to an earlier letter by Dr Magnani and colleagues. They had matched mesothelioma cases from 1980-89 in the area of the Casale health unit, north-west Italy, with the cases identified among employees of a large asbestos-cement plant. The author argued that treating the remaining cases as evidence of non-occupational, environmental asbestos disease was unjustified, since Magnani and colleagues mentioned but ignored possible other work exposure in the district. The author noted that occupational asbestos exposure occurred widely outside asbestos manufacturing. The author cited figures from Dr D. H. Yates (personal communication): of 236 histologically confirmed mesothelioma cases in south-east England in 1987 attributable to occupational or para-occupational exposure, only 13 (5.5%) were among employees in primary manufacture of asbestos products. The rest were attributed to user industries. The author considered Magnani's Varese province figures not relevant without a detailed study of industrial patterns. The author concluded that Magnani's figures offered no evidence on whether purely environmental cases occurred in the Casale Monferrato district.

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 (correspondence) criticising another group's published letter; no new study by the author
• Who was studied: The author studied no population. The letter discussed mesothelioma cases reported by Magnani and colleagues in the Casale health unit area, north-west Italy, 1980-89. They had matched these cases with the mesothelioma cases identified among employees of the town's asbestos-cement plant.
• Exposure: Asbestos exposure in general, with no fiber type named. The letter contrasts occupational exposure (asbestos manufacturing and user industries such as lagging and rag-sorting) with non-occupational environmental exposure.
• Main results:
  • The author's criticism: Magnani and colleagues mentioned possible other occupational exposure in the district but ignored it in their conclusion.
  • Data the author cited from Dr D. H. Yates (personal communication), not the author's own study: of 236 histologically confirmed mesothelioma cases in south-east England in 1987 attributable to occupational or para-occupational exposure, 13 (5.5%) were among employees in primary manufacture of asbestos products.
  • In the same cited south-east England data, all the remaining cases were attributed to user industries.
  • Citing earlier letters, the author stated that there was evidence in Britain that mesothelioma risk began to decline earlier in manufacturing than in user industry, as a consequence of earlier effective dust control.
  • The author considered Magnani's figures from Varese province not relevant without a detailed study of industrial patterns.
  • The author stated that searching for mesothelioma cases due solely to true environmental exposure is difficult, because of problems with retrospective history-taking and with distinguishing idiopathic cases.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the figures given by Magnani and colleagues offered no evidence on whether any cases due solely to environmental exposure had occurred in the Casale Monferrato district.

Topics

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

Related studies

• The relationship between malignant mesothelioma and an asbestos cement plant environmental risk: a spatial case-control study in the city of Bari (Italy) — M. Musti, A. Pollice, et al. (2009)
• Environmental household exposures to asbestos and occurrence of pleural mesothelioma — D. Dodoli, M. Del Nevo, et al. (1992)
• Occupational and environmental exposures and lung cancer in an industrialised area in Italy — V. Fano, P. Michelozzi, et al. (2004)
• Environmental asbestos exposure and mesothelioma cases in Bari, Apulia region, southern Italy: a national interest site for land reclamation — L. Vimercati, D. Cavone, et al. (2018)
• Mesothelioma and non-occupational environmental exposure to asbestos — C. Magnani, G. Borgo, et al. (1991)
• Asbestos related diseases in Italy: an integrated approach to identify unexpected professional or environmental exposure risks at municipal level — A. Marinaccio, A. Scarselli, et al. (2008)

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