Letter on: "Cosmetic talc as a risk factor for pleural mesothelioma: a weight of evidence evaluation of the epidemiology"

Our plain-English summary of Letter on: "Cosmetic talc as a risk factor for pleural mesothelioma: a weight of evidence evaluation of the epidemiology", by D. Mirabelli (Inhalation Toxicology, 2017).

The study

• Author: D. Mirabelli
• Journal: Inhalation Toxicology
• Published: 2017;29(8):341
• Type of article: Letter, Comment
• Cited by: 4 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This is a letter to the editor, not a research study. The author, from the Piedmont mesothelioma registry in Italy, commented on a 2017 review by Finley and colleagues, which had found no mesothelioma cases in published cohort studies of talc miners and millers. In 2007, after a mortality follow-up of the Italian talc cohort had been completed, the registry recorded pleural mesothelioma in a 79-year-old man who reported working in maintenance from 1947 to 1957 at the Talco and Grafite talc mill. The author noted that maintenance workers might have been exposed to asbestos for reasons other than contaminated talc. Earlier work had considered such contamination absent in these mines, though it also reported low-level airborne asbestos exposure. The author pointed out that the earlier cohort study gave 1.8 expected pleural cancer deaths, compared with 2.8 in the review's table. The author concluded that this does not change the lack of excess mesothelioma deaths in the Val Germanasca cohort. However, the gap between observed and expected cases may be smaller than the review estimated. Piedmont rates reflect widespread occupational asbestos exposure, not "background" exposure.

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 a published review (Finley et al., 2017); reports one registry case and regional incidence statistics
• Who was studied: The Italian (Val Germanasca) cohort of talc miners and millers discussed in the review; one man, aged 79, with pleural mesothelioma registered in 2007 by the Piedmont Registry of Malignant Mesotheliomas
• Exposure: Employment as a maintenance worker from 1947 to 1957 at the Talco and Grafite talc mill; asbestos contamination of the talc had been considered absent, but low-level airborne asbestos exposure was reported by Rubino et al. (1976)
• Main results:
  • In 2007, after the Coggiola et al. (2003) mortality follow-up had been completed, the Piedmont registry recorded a case of pleural mesothelioma in a former maintenance worker at the Talco and Grafite talc mill
  • In Piedmont, age-standardized mesothelioma incidence rates in men rose from 2.7 in 1990 to 1994 to 6.4 per 100,000 person-years in 2010 to 2014 (European population standard)
  • The expected number of pleural cancer deaths in the Coggiola et al. (2003) cohort study was 1.8; the author considered the figure of 2.8 in the Finley et al. review's table 1 likely an overestimation
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that these observations do not change the lack of excess mesothelioma deaths in the Val Germanasca cohort, but that the difference between observed and expected cases may be smaller than Finley et al. estimated. The author also concluded that Piedmont pleural mesothelioma rates reflect widespread occupational asbestos exposure and are not the result of background exposures.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The maintenance worker may have been exposed to asbestos for reasons other than asbestos contamination of talc

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Talc and vermiculite.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Cosmetic Talc, Pleural Mesothelioma, Epidemiology.

Related studies

• Response to letters regarding "Cosmetic talc as a risk factor for pleural mesothelioma: a weight of evidence evaluation of the epidemiology" — B.L. Finley, S.M. Benson, et al. (2018)
• Cosmetic talc as a risk factor for pleural mesothelioma: a weight of evidence evaluation of the epidemiology — B.L. Finley, S.M. Benson, et al. (2017)
• Re: Brent L. Finley, Stacey M. Benson & Gary M. Marsh (2017): Cosmetic talc as a risk factor for pleural mesothelioma: a weight of evidence evaluation of the epidemiology, Inhalation Toxicology, DOI: 10.1080/08958378.2017.1336187 — M.M. Finkelstein (2017)
• A quantitative weight of evidence assessment of Hill's guidelines for causal inference for cosmetic talc as a cause of mesothelioma — A.M. Ierardi, A. Urban, et al. (2021)
• Letter concerning: Burns AM, Barlow CA, Banducci AM, Unice KM, Sahmel J. Potential Airborne Asbestos Exposure and Risk Associated with the Historical Use of Cosmetic Talcum Powder Products — M.M. Finkelstein (2019)
• Absence of mesothelioma risk maintained in an expanded international cohort of cosmetic talc miners and millers — A.M. Ierardi, G.M. Marsh (2020)

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