French agency agrees to publication of asbestos report

Our plain-English summary of French agency agrees to publication of asbestos report, by D. Butler (Nature, 1997).

The study

• Author: D. Butler
• Journal: Nature
• Published: 1997;390(6657):209
• Type of article: News
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This short Nature news item is not a research study and does not report the asbestos report's findings. It said INSERM, the French national biomedical research agency, would publish as a book a controversial expert-panel report on the risks of asbestos. An earlier decision merely to make the report 'publicly available' had been criticized for relegating it to 'grey' literature. Research minister Claude Allègre, an outspoken critic of the report, strongly refuted allegations that INSERM had blocked formal publication on his ministry's instructions. He asked why he would have opposed distributing 'a text of mediocre quality'. INSERM called the allegations 'a storm in a teacup' and said publication had always been a possibility. But a letter from Jean Marimbert, head of the ministry's department of labour relations, to INSERM's director general stated that INSERM representatives had decided not to publish the final report at INSERM Editions, and it demanded a reversal. The letter warned that grey-literature status would strengthen opponents of the asbestos ban introduced after the report's preliminary conclusions were released in July 1996.

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: news article (not a research study)
• Exposure: asbestos in general; the news item does not describe fiber types, products, jobs or doses
• Main results:
  • The news item reported that INSERM was to publish the expert-panel report on asbestos risks as a book.
  • An earlier decision to make the report 'publicly available' had been criticized as relegating it to 'grey' literature.
  • Research minister Claude Allègre, described as an outspoken critic of the report, strongly refuted allegations that INSERM had blocked formal publication on his ministry's instructions.
  • Allègre asked why he would have opposed distribution of a text he called of mediocre quality.
  • INSERM played down the allegations and claimed eventual publication had always been a possibility.
  • A ministry letter to INSERM's director general stated that INSERM representatives had decided not to publish the final report at INSERM Editions, and demanded that the decision be reversed.
  • The letter said grey-literature status would strengthen those opposed to the asbestos ban introduced after the report's preliminary conclusions were released in July 1996.

Related studies

• French ministries in argument over release of asbestos report — D. Butler (1997)
• An assessment of the Environmental Protection Agency's asbestos hazard evaluation algorithm — M.E. Findley, V.E. Rose, et al. (1983)
• How do you interpret regulations: through science or agency rules? — J.H. Lange (2002)
• EPA as a public health agency — B.D. Goldstein (1988)
• Pleural mesothelioma: dose-response relation at low levels of asbestos exposure in a French population-based case-control study — Y. Iwatsubo, J.C. Pairon, et al. (1998)
• Future trends in mortality of French men from mesothelioma — A. Banaei, B. Auvert, et al. (2000)

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