Estimating the number of asbestos-related cancer deaths in Great Britain

Our plain-English summary of Estimating the number of asbestos-related cancer deaths in Great Britain, by M. Greenberg (The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, 2006).

The study

• Author: M. Greenberg
• Journal: The Annals of Occupational Hygiene
• Published: 2006;50(1):107
• Type of article: Letter, Comment
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This is a one-page letter to the editor, not a research study. It reports no new data. The author commented on a 2006 paper by Darnton and colleagues that estimated asbestos-related cancer deaths in Great Britain. Those authors had relied on indirect data because no direct measurements of asbestos exposure among occupational groups, and no quantitative smoking measures, were available. The author wrote that such data had once been planned. In 1969, HM Factory Inspectorate launched a national study of asbestos workers. It was to record respiratory symptoms, chest X-ray readings on the ILO scale, smoking habits, and personal air samples for workers in 66 job codes, and to receive death and cancer registrations. It was meant to derive dose-response relationships for the lower exposures targeted by the 1969 Asbestos Regulations and to measure the health burden of asbestos in manufacturing. The author wrote that the study ran successfully for several years but was terminated by a successor. The author argued that measuring the full health burden of asbestos would have been much more reliable had those data been collected.

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 commenting on another published paper (Darnton et al., 2006); not an original study
• Who was studied: No study population. The letter discusses Darnton et al.'s estimates for Great Britain and describes a national study of asbestos workers launched by HM Factory Inspectorate in 1969.
• Exposure: Asbestos exposure in manufacturing (no fiber type named). The 1969 study planned personal air sampling for workers in 66 job codes. The letter refers to the 2 fibres per millilitre standard linked to the 1969 Asbestos Regulations.
• Main results:
  • The author stated that the 1969 study had two purposes: to derive dose-response relationships for the lower-level exposures aimed for by the 1969 Asbestos Regulations, and to obtain a comprehensive measure of the health burden of asbestos in manufacturing.
  • The author stated that, according to BOHS documents obtained in legal discovery, some members of the BOHS Sub-Committee on Asbestos recommended, not long after 1968, reducing exposures to less than a fortieth of the 1968 standard.
  • The author stated that the Factory Inspectorate study ran successfully for several years before being terminated by a successor.
• The authors' conclusion: The author argued that measuring the full burden of asbestos on health and longevity would have been much more reliable if data had been collected as scientists advised in 1968.

Topics

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

Related studies

• Estimating the number of asbestos-related lung cancer deaths in Great Britain from 1980 to 2000 — A.J. Darnton, D.M. McElvenny, et al. (2006)
• Monitor. Mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain — M. Kinoulty (2004)
• Chest physician-reported, work-related, long-latency respiratory disease in Great Britain — M. Carder, A. Darnton, et al. (2017)
• The expected burden of mesothelioma mortality in Great Britain from 2002 to 2050 — J.T. Hodgson, D.M. McElvenny, et al. (2005)
• Occupational cancer burden in Great Britain — L. Rushton, S.J. Hutchings, et al. (2012)
• Mesothelioma mortality in Great Britain from 1968 to 2001 — D.M. McElvenny, A.J. Darnton, et al. (2005)

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