Lest we forget

Our plain-English summary of Lest we forget, by J. Hobson (Occupational Medicine, 2014).

The study

• Author: J. Hobson
• Journal: Occupational Medicine
• Published: 2014;64(1):30
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This item was not a research study. It was a short first-person essay by the author, published in Occupational Medicine. The author described driving before dawn to an oil refinery in the industrial area between Antwerp and Rotterdam to carry out 80 asbestos medical examinations on some of the roughly four and a half thousand contractors brought in for the refinery's shutdown. The contractors the author examined were mainly eastern European, and most examinations were done through an interpreter. The author reported that the site manager blamed oil and chemical exposures for lymphoma and other cancers in older workers, and said environmental and engineering controls were better now. These were the manager's views, not findings of the essay. The essay then turned to reflections on European government in Brussels, the battle of Waterloo, and the British and Commonwealth soldiers who died defending the Ypres Salient, remembered at the Menin Gate and Tyne Cot cemetery. It ended with the words 'Lest we forget.' The essay reported no examination results, no details of asbestos exposure or fiber type, and no data on asbestos-related disease.

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: First-person reflective essay (not a research study)
• Who was studied: Contractors brought in for an oil refinery shutdown in the Antwerp to Rotterdam industrial area. The author did asbestos medicals on 80 of about four and a half thousand contractors, and the contractors the author saw were mainly eastern European. No date is given.
• Exposure: Not described. The essay mentions asbestos medical examinations but gives no fiber types, products, jobs or doses. The site manager's attribution of cancers to oil and chemical exposures is reported only as the manager's opinion.

Topics

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

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