Globally asbestos-free automobiles

Our plain-English summary of Globally asbestos-free automobiles, by J. Rangé (International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 1999).

The study

• Author: J. Rangé
• Journal: International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health
• Published: 1999;5(3):242-3
• Type of article: Comment, Letter
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This is a letter to the editor, not a research study, and it reports no new data. The author, president of the Associação Brasileira do Amianto in Brazil, responded to an editorial by Barry Castleman on asbestos in automobiles. The author wrote that in October 1991 a United States Court of Appeals rejected the EPA's proposed asbestos ban, so most asbestos products, including friction and sealing materials, remained allowed there. Among four reasons given for the EPA's loss, the author said the agency failed to evaluate harm from substitutes, many of which the author said contain carcinogenic elements. The author also cited the court on non-asbestos brakes possibly raising highway deaths. The author pointed to Brazil's law 9055/95 and a tripartite asbestos commission. Two replies were printed alongside. Castleman wrote that no scientific studies supported the brake-safety claim or showed substitutes rivaling asbestos brakes as a health hazard. Fernanda Giannasi, of the Brazilian Labor Ministry, wrote that law 9055/95 began as a ban bill and became a law allowing only chrysotile, and that worker members had left the commission.

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 (opinion correspondence), printed together with two replies; no study data
• Exposure: asbestos products in the automobile industry and generally, including friction, joints and sealing materials, and textile products; the Giannasi reply refers to white asbestos (chrysotile)
• Main results:
  • The letter's author stated that in October 1991 the United States Court of Appeals rejected the EPA's proposal to prohibit asbestos and its products in the United States.
  • As one of four reasons the EPA lost, the letter's author said the agency failed to evaluate the damage from increased use of substitute products, many of which the author said contain carcinogenic elements.
  • After citing the court's statement that non-asbestos brakes could increase highway fatalities, the letter's author said the same conclusion may be extended to sealing and gasket materials in the automobile industry.
  • The letter's author pointed to Brazil's federal law 9055/95 of June 1, 1995, covering safety in the use of asbestos and other fibers.
  • In reply, Castleman wrote that the highway safety claim about non-asbestos brakes has never been supported by any scientific studies.
  • Castleman also wrote that nothing had been published to indicate that substitute materials could rival asbestos-containing brakes as a health hazard.
  • In a second reply, Giannasi wrote that law 9055/95 began as a bill to ban asbestos and was replaced by a law guaranteeing the use of only white asbestos (chrysotile).
  • Giannasi wrote that the commission (CPA) initially had 32 members (16 from government, eight from workers, eight from employers), of whom 23 publicly defended "controlled use of asbestos".
  • Giannasi wrote that five members representing the workers and one physician from the governmental board resigned from the CPA, advocating a ban on asbestos.
• The authors' conclusion: The letter's author concluded that Brazilians know how to solve their asbestos problems from the Brazilian point of view better than distant observers.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Auto mechanics and brake work.

Related studies

• Globally asbestos-free automobiles — B. Castleman (1998)
• Cumulative asbestos exposure for US automobile mechanics involved in brake repair (circa 1950s-2000) — B.L. Finley, R.O. Richter, et al. (2007)
• Chrysotile asbestos exposure associated with removal of automobile exhaust systems (ca. 1945-1975) by mechanics: results of a simulation study — D.J. Paustenbach, A.K. Madl, et al. (2006)
• Assessment of airborne asbestos exposure during the servicing and handling of automobile asbestos-containing gaskets — C.L. Blake, G.S. Dotson, et al. (2006)
• Mortality studies of machining fluid exposure in the automobile industry. III: A case-control study of larynx cancer — E.A. Eisen, P.E. Tolbert, et al. (1994)
• A study of airborne chrysotile concentrations associated with handling, unpacking, and repacking boxes of automobile clutch discs — G.C. Jiang, A.K. Madl, et al. (2008)

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