Environmental dangers: asbestos and tuberculosis

Our plain-English summary of Environmental dangers: asbestos and tuberculosis, by G. Hillerdal (Respiration; International Review of Thoracic Diseases, 2000).

The study

• Author: G. Hillerdal
• Journal: Respiration; International Review of Thoracic Diseases
• Published: 2000;67(2):134
• Type of article: Editorial
• Cited by: 7 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Summary of the article

In this editorial, the author commented on an article by Topçu and colleagues, in the same issue of Respiration, on high-resolution computed tomography in people with environmental asbestos exposure in Turkey. He noted that field studies in Turkey, pioneered by Professor Y. Izzettin Baris, had shown that environmental pollution from locally occurring mineral fibers, both asbestos and fibrous zeolite, could cause lung and chest diseases similar to those caused by workplace asbestos exposure. He listed other countries where environmental mineral fiber exposure had been reported, including Greece, Bulgaria, France, Russia, South Africa, Japan, China and New Caledonia. He stated that, because people move between countries, doctors elsewhere need to be aware of such problems in their patients' home countries. He discussed two aspects of the Topçu article. First, the patients had been selected because they had extensive pleural changes and chest symptoms. Because pleural plaques do not by themselves cause symptoms, he said the symptoms indicated another disease, and he considered it unsurprising that tuberculosis was one cause, given its fairly high incidence in Turkey. Second, he noted that apical pleural thickening, often attributed to tuberculosis, is increasingly recognized as a fairly rare but important lesion that can result from asbestos exposure. To his knowledge, the article was the first to describe it in people with environmental exposure only. He concluded that continued study of environmental health problems in Turkey was of national and wider scientific importance.

PubMed has no abstract for this study, and the article doesn't print one. We wrote this summary from the full article with the help of AI. It is not the authors' wording.

In plain English

This one-page editorial reported no study of its own. The author, from Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, commented on an article by Topçu and coworkers in the same issue of Respiration. That article used high-resolution computed tomography in people in Turkey with environmental exposure to asbestos. The author said earlier Turkish field studies had shown that local mineral fibers, both asbestos and fibrous zeolite, could cause lung and chest diseases like those from workplace asbestos exposure. The author noted that the Topçu patients had been selected from patients with extensive pleural changes who had chest symptoms. Because pleural plaques alone do not cause symptoms, the author reasoned that the symptoms indicated another disease; tuberculosis was one cause. The author recalled calcified plaques being dismissed as 'old tuberculosis'. The author also said that apical pleural thickening, 'a fairly rare but still important lesion', can result from asbestos exposure. To the author's knowledge, the Topçu article was the first to describe this thickening in people with environmental exposure only. The author concluded that continued study of environmental health problems in Turkey would add knowledge useful in developed and developing countries.

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: Editorial (commentary on another article in the same journal issue); no original data
• Who was studied: No population was studied in this editorial. It commented on patients in the Topçu et al. article, who, as the editorial describes them, were selected from patients with extensive pleural changes who had chest symptoms. No numbers are given.
• Exposure: Environmental (non-occupational) exposure to locally occurring mineral fibers in Turkey, both asbestos and fibrous zeolite
• Main results:
  • The author noted that, in the Topçu et al. article, tuberculosis was one of the causes of the chest symptoms in these selected patients
  • The author stated that pleural plaques, even if extensive, do not by themselves cause symptoms
  • The author recalled that calcified pleural plaques in some Turkish villages had been dismissed by local doctors as old tuberculosis
  • The author stated that apical pleural thickening is a fairly rare lesion that can result from asbestos exposure
  • To the author's knowledge, the Topçu et al. article was the first to describe apical pleural thickening in persons with environmental exposure only
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that continued studies of environmental health problems in Turkey matter nationally and will add scientific knowledge useful in both developed and developing countries

Topics

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

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Asbestos Exposure, Mineral Fiber, Zeolite, New Caledonia, Pleural Plaques, Pleural Thickening, Environmental Exposure.

Related studies

• High-resolution computed tomography in cases with environmental exposure to asbestos in Turkey — F. Topçu, H. Bayram, et al. (2000)
• Tuberculosis and risk of cancer: a Danish nationwide cohort study — D.F. Simonsen, D.K. Farkas, et al. (2014)
• Environmental asbestos exposure and malignant pleural mesothelioma — M. Metintas, N. Ozdemir, et al. (1999)
• Nonmalignant pleural lesions due to environmental exposure to asbestos: a field-based, cross-sectional study — M. Metintas, S. Metintas, et al. (2005)
• Lung diseases due to environmental exposures to erionite and asbestos in Turkey — S. Emri, A. Demir, et al. (2002)
• Environmental asbestos-related pleural plaque in southeast of Turkey — G. Ates, T. Yildiz, et al. (2010)

Browse more research in Respiration; International Review of Thoracic Diseases, or return to medical research.