Magic, menace, myth and malice

Our plain-English summary of Magic, menace, myth and malice, by F.D. Liddell (The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, 1997).

The study

• Author: F.D. Liddell
• Journal: The Annals of Occupational Hygiene
• Published: 1997;41(1):3-12
• Type of article: Comment, Editorial, Historical article
• Cited by: 10 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Abstract

In the 1950s, asbestos had so many uses that it was known as the magic mineral. However, in the next few years it was established that severe exposure to respirable asbestos fibres had led to respiratory fibrosis, or asbestosis, excess lung cancer, and mesothelioma. Ignoring the word 'severe' in the preceding sentence, an anti-asbestos lobby, based in the Mount Sinai School of Medicine of the City University of New York, promoted the fiction that asbestos was an all-pervading menace, and trumped up a number of asbestos myths for widespread dissemination, through media eager for bad news. These included: all workers ever exposed to asbestos will die prematurely of asbestos-related disease; all forms of asbestos are equally hazardous; one asbestos fibre can kill; any substitute for asbestos must be less harmful. Like all myths, they were inventions without foundation and entirely untrue, but they were welcomed by the media and promulgated so ardently that they were soon almost universally believed, engendering widespread 'fibre-phobia'; the anti-asbestos lobby (hereinafter The Lobby) became both influential and powerful. When the first findings from Quebec were published they threatened to dispel the myths, and so The Lobby tried to denigrate them. As this could not be done on scientific grounds, a campaign of intense malice was conducted against the principal Quebec investigator. And of course any group, such as that at Tulane University in New Orleans, which found evidence contrary to the myths was also castigated or even ostracised. Nevertheless, honest scientists have continued their endeavours, and what follows provides some background to the study that is reported in the accompanying paper (p. 13).

PubMed has no abstract for this study. This is the authors' abstract, copied from the article.

In plain English

This article was an editorial, not a research study, and it reported no new data. The author, from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill University, gave a history of asbestos use and of research on its health effects. It was written as background to a study reported in an accompanying paper, and it described the Quebec asbestos industry survey begun by Corbett McDonald in 1966. The author argued that an anti-asbestos lobby based at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine had spread what the author called myths, such as that all forms of asbestos are equally hazardous. The author also criticised a 1979 Mount Sinai study of insulation workers and a 1996 review by Smith and Wright. A table summarised more than 30 published studies of asbestos workers. The author said it showed large differences in lung cancer and mesothelioma between workers exposed to chrysotile only and those exposed to amphiboles only, while cautioning that the figures did not prove anything. The author concluded that all amphiboles should be proscribed, but that chrysotile at current occupational exposure levels was "essentially innocuous, except possibly in textile manufacture."

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: Editorial (opinion and historical commentary), not original research; it introduces an accompanying paper
• Who was studied: No population was studied. The author summarised published epidemiological studies of asbestos workers.
• Exposure: Asbestos fiber types compared: chrysotile (serpentine) versus the amphiboles crocidolite, amosite, anthophyllite, tremolite and actinolite
• Main results:
  • In the author's summary table, Quebec chrysotile mining and milling workers (chrysotile only) had 230 lung cancer deaths with an SMR of 1.25, and 10 mesothelioma deaths with a PMR of 0.3%
  • In the same table, chrysotile-only textile workers had 94 lung cancer deaths with an SMR of 1.69. The author noted very few mesotheliomas but a marked excess of lung cancer in this group.
  • In the same table, workers exposed to amphiboles only (manufacture and mining and milling) had 208 lung cancer deaths with an SMR of 3.07, and 91 mesothelioma deaths with a PMR of 3.6%
  • In the same table, the 17 800 insulation workers exposed to chrysotile and amphiboles had 397 lung cancer deaths with an SMR of 4.24, and 170 mesothelioma deaths with a PMR of 8.1%. The author stated that these figures were out of line even with those for amphibole-only workers.
  • The author argued, citing Elmes (1991), that chrysotile appears more harmful than amphiboles in animal experiments but less harmful in humans, because humans largely clear chrysotile from the lung while amphiboles are retained
  • The author criticised the 1996 Smith and Wright review for leaving out 16 studies with low mesothelioma PMRs. According to the author, these included every cohort exposed to chrysotile alone.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that crocidolite is highly toxic and that all amphiboles should be proscribed. In the author's view, chrysotile at current occupational exposure levels is essentially innocuous, except possibly in textile manufacture.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author cautioned that the summarised SMRs and PMRs do not prove anything and only illustrate patterns

Topics

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

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Fibrosis, Lung Cancer, Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Toward an Asbestos Ban in the United States — R.A. Lemen, P.J. Landrigan (2017)
• Asbestos mining in Southern Africa, 1893-2002 — J. McCulloch (2003)
• Experimental asbestos studies in the UK: 1912-1950 — M. Greenberg (2017)
• Historical background to the asbestos problem — D.H. Lee, I.J. Selikoff (1979)
• Dangerous and cancer-causing properties of products and chemicals in the oil refining and petrochemical industry: Part V--Asbestos-caused cancers and exposure of workers in the oil refining industry — M.A. Mehlman (1991)
• Merlin, a "magic" linker between extracellular cues and intracellular signaling pathways that regulate cell motility, proliferation, and survival — I. Stamenkovic, Q. Yu (2010)

Browse more research in The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, or return to medical research.