In reply: asbestos, carcinogenicity, and public policy

Our plain-English summary of In reply: asbestos, carcinogenicity, and public policy, by B.T. Mossman, J. Bignon (Science, 1990).

The study

• Authors: B.T. Mossman, J. Bignon
• Journal: Science
• Published: 1990;248(4957):799-802
• Cited by: 3 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 003820).

In plain English

This item is a letter in Science replying to criticism of an earlier article by Mossman and colleagues. It is correspondence rather than a research report, and the part that survives presents no new data. Only the opening of the reply survives in the supplied text. The reply responded to Brody, who had described experiments in mice and rats as showing a significant response in the lung after a single, intense inhalation exposure to chrysotile asbestos. Brody had compared those experiments with the exposures of janitors changing light bulbs and teachers entering dusty corners. The reply called these arguments flawed. It stated that Brody did not mention that cell labeling in the asbestos-exposed rodent lungs returned to normal levels that persisted throughout the 30-day observation period. It also stated that Brody showed no fibrotic lesions by accepted functional and histopathologic criteria. The authors argued that the responses Brody observed were acute, reversible changes with no necessary relation to the development of pulmonary fibrosis. The rest of the reply is missing from the text.

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 (authors' reply to correspondence); the surviving part presents no new data
• Who was studied: no study population; the reply discusses Brody's experiments in mice and rats
• Exposure: chrysotile asbestos, a single intense inhalation exposure in rodents (as described by Brody), which Brody compared with exposures of janitors and teachers in buildings
• Main results:
  • The reply stated that labeling (incorporation of tritiated thymidine) in the asbestos-exposed rodent lungs returned to normal levels that persisted throughout the 30-day observation period, which Brody did not mention
  • The reply stated that Brody showed no fibrotic lesions by accepted functional and histopathologic criteria
• The authors' conclusion: The authors argued that the asbestos-induced mitogenic responses in Brody's rodent work were acute, reversible changes with no necessary relation to the development of pulmonary fibrosis, and that Brody's arguments were flawed

Related studies

• In reply: asbestos, carcinogenicity, and public policy — W.J. Nicholson, E.M. Johnson, et al. (1990)
• In reply: asbestos, carcinogenicity, and public policy — S.W. Samuels (1990)
• In reply: asbestos, carcinogenicity, and public policy — K.S. Crump (1990)
• Asbestos: scientific developments and implications for public policy — B.T. Mossman, J. Bignon, et al. (1990)
• Reply to letter by Nolan and colleagues--re: the carcinogenicity of New York state talc dusts in humans — M. Finkelstein (2013)
• Naturally occurring asbestos: a recurring public policy challenge — R.J. Lee, B.R. Strohmeier, et al. (2008)

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