Erionite and cancer in a Mexican village

Our plain-English summary of Erionite and cancer in a Mexican village, by R. Saracci (Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2015).

The study

• Author: R. Saracci
• Journal: Occupational and Environmental Medicine
• Published: 2015;72(3):163-4
• Type of article: Editorial, Comment
• Cited by: 5 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Summary of the article

This commissioned commentary discussed a report by Ortega-Guerrero et al on lung cancer and malignant mesothelioma in Tierra Blanca de Abajo, a village in Central Mexico with 254 inhabitants (134 men, 120 women) in 2012. In that report, lung cancer death rates were about 70 times higher than in the state of Guanajuato for men (eight cases) and 100 times higher for women (six cases). Mesothelioma rates, based on four cases, were 248 and 105 per 100 000 person-years in men and women respectively. Chrysotile asbestos-cement roofing was present but was equally present in nearby villages without high cancer rates. Erionite was found in local tuff, alluvial terraces and adobe bricks. The author compared these findings with studies of Karain, Turkey, where an outbreak of 36 pleural mesotheliomas was reported in 1978 without detectable asbestos exposure. Pleural mesothelioma death rates there were of the order of 1000 per 100 000 person-years, and a 1979–2003 follow-up found 658 (men) and 697 (women) per 100 000 person-years. Erionite is classified by IARC as carcinogenic to humans. The author noted what the Mexican report lacked: independent confirmatory observations, airborne fibre measurements, radiological findings, information on family aggregation, and enough cases for age-specific analysis. He concluded that further observation and data should allow the hypothesis of an erionite-caused hotspot outside Turkey to be substantiated.

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 article was a commentary, not an original study. The author discussed a report by Ortega-Guerrero and colleagues on Tierra Blanca de Abajo, a Central Mexican village of 254 people in 2012. As the commentary described that report, lung cancer death rates were about 70 times the Guanajuato state rate in men (eight cases) and 100 times in women (six cases). Malignant mesothelioma death rates, from four cases in total, were 248 per 100 000 person-years in men and 105 in women. Erionite, a zeolite mineral, was found in local tuff, alluvial terraces and adobe bricks. Chrysotile asbestos-cement roofing was present, but equally so in nearby villages without high respiratory cancer rates. The author compared Karain, Turkey, where pleural mesothelioma death rates were of the order of 1000 per 100 000 person-years. The author noted that the report gave no airborne fibre measurements, no radiological findings such as pleural plaques, and no information on family aggregation of cases. It also had too few cases per age group for the age-mortality analysis used in Karain. The author concluded that further data should allow the hypothesis that erionite caused the Tierra Blanca hotspot to be substantiated.

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: Commissioned commentary (editorial) on another study published in the same journal issue; no new data
• Who was studied: No population of its own. Discusses the Ortega-Guerrero et al study of Tierra Blanca de Abajo, Guanajuato, Central Mexico (254 people, 134 men and 120 women, in 2012), and compares it with earlier studies of Karain and Karlik villages in Cappadocia, Turkey
• Exposure: Environmental erionite (a zeolite mineral) found in zeolitic tuff, fine-grained old-alluvial terraces and adobe building bricks. Chrysotile asbestos-cement roofing was also present, but equally so in nearby villages without high respiratory cancer incidence
• Main results:
  • As reported by Ortega-Guerrero et al: lung cancer death rates in Tierra Blanca were some 70 times higher than in Guanajuato state for men (eight cases) and 100 times higher for women (six cases)
  • As reported by Ortega-Guerrero et al: malignant mesothelioma death rates in Tierra Blanca, based on four cases in total, were 248 per 100 000 person-years in men and 105 per 100 000 person-years in women
  • As reported by Ortega-Guerrero et al: in 206 samples of rocks, soils and building materials, other carcinogens (arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, nickel) were at concentrations lower than those deemed harmful to humans
  • From earlier Turkish studies cited by the author: pleural mesothelioma death rates in Karain were of the order of 1000 per 100 000 person-years. A 1979 to 2003 follow-up found 658 per 100 000 person-years in Karain men and 697 in women
  • In Tierra Blanca, lung cancer was recorded as nearly four times more frequent than pleural mesothelioma. In Karain the opposite held, with only a few lung cancer cases
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that extended observation of the population, with additional epidemiological and environmental data, should allow the reasonable hypothesis that Tierra Blanca is the first example outside Turkey of a respiratory cancer hotspot caused by erionite to be substantiated in future
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author noted that no airborne fibre measurements had been reported for Tierra Blanca
  • The author noted that the Mexican paper did not mention radiological findings such as pleural plaques and fibrosis, which in Turkey supported a mineral-fibre cause
  • The author noted that the Mexican report gave no information on family aggregation of cases
  • The author noted that case numbers per age group in Tierra Blanca were too small for an age-mortality analysis like the one done in Karain
  • The author stated that confirmation of a hotspot should come from separate observations, not from the same cases that first signalled it

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: erionite, Lung Cancer, Malignant Mesothelioma, Mesothelioma, Chrysotile, Asbestos-Cement, Karain, Pleural Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• High incidence of lung cancer and malignant mesothelioma linked to erionite fibre exposure in a rural community in Central Mexico — M.A. Ortega-Guerrero, G. Carrasco-Núñez, et al. (2015)
• Erionite exposure in North Dakota and Turkish villages with mesothelioma — M. Carbone, Y.I. Baris, et al. (2011)
• Lung diseases due to environmental exposures to erionite and asbestos in Turkey — S. Emri, A. Demir, et al. (2002)
• Geological occurrence, mineralogical characterization, and risk assessment of potentially carcinogenic erionite in Italy — M. Giordani, M. Mattioli, et al. (2017)
• Geologic occurrences of erionite in the United States: an emerging national public health concern for respiratory disease — B.S. Van Gosen, T.A. Blitz, et al. (2013)
• Patterns of c-fos and c-jun proto-oncogene expression, apoptosis, and proliferation in rat pleural mesothelial cells exposed to erionite or asbestos fibers — C.R. Timblin, G.D. Guthrie, et al. (1998)

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