Mineral fiber content of lung tissue in patients with environmental exposures: household contacts vs. building occupants

Our plain-English summary of Mineral fiber content of lung tissue in patients with environmental exposures: household contacts vs. building occupants, by V.L. Roggli, W.E. Longo (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1991).

The study

• Authors: V.L. Roggli, W.E. Longo
• Journal: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
• Published: 1991;643:511-8
• Type of article: Case report
• Cited by: 16 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. 004439).

Abstract

Analysis of tissue mineral fiber content in patients with environmental exposures has seldom been reported in the past. Our studies of six household contacts of asbestos workers indicate that these individuals often have pulmonary asbestos concentrations similar to some occupationally exposed individuals. In contrast, our studies of four occupants of buildings with asbestos-containing materials indicate that these individuals often have pulmonary asbestos burdens indistinguishable from the general nonoccupationally exposed population. However, one such building occupant exposed for many years and who later developed pleural mesothelioma was studied in detail, and it was concluded that her exposure as a teacher's aide in a school building containing acoustical plaster was the likely cause of her mesothelioma.

In plain English

This report described lung tissue from ten people whose only known asbestos exposure was as a household contact of an asbestos worker (six cases) or as an occupant of a building containing asbestos materials (four cases). The six household contacts were all women aged 33 to 73. Three had pleural mesothelioma and three had lung cancer. In five of the six, the worker at home was an insulator with asbestosis. Their lungs held a median of 1,700 asbestos bodies per gram of wet lung, against the authors' normal range of 0 to 20, and almost half of the analyzed fibers were amosite or crocidolite. The four building occupants had counts from less than 0.2 to 14 per gram, all within the normal range. Fewer than 5% of their fibers were amosite or crocidolite. One building occupant was a woman with pleural mesothelioma and pleural plaques who had worked in a school. Tremolite and other components of the school's acoustical plaster were found in her lungs, and the authors judged the plaster the most likely source of the tremolite. The authors concluded that household contacts often had lung asbestos levels similar to some occupationally exposed people.

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: Case series: lung tissue fiber analysis of cases from the author's consultation files, compared with the authors' series of occupationally exposed and unexposed people
• Who was studied: 10 patients whose only known asbestos exposure was environmental: 6 household contacts of asbestos workers (all women, aged 33 to 73) and 4 occupants of buildings with asbestos-containing materials (three men and one woman, aged 45 to 58); place and dates not stated beyond the authors' Durham, North Carolina institutions
• Exposure: Household exposure from an asbestos worker in the home (in five of six cases an insulation worker with clinically diagnosed asbestosis), or working in or attending school in buildings with asbestos-containing materials for 12 to 20 years
• Main results:
  • Household contacts: asbestos bodies ranged from 2 to 8,200 per gram of wet lung, median 1,700
  • Household contacts: uncoated fibers 5 microns or longer ranged from 17,000 to 120,000 per gram, median 24,300
  • Reference values: the authors' normal range for asbestos bodies, from 84 cases with no evidence of asbestos exposure or asbestos-related disease, was 0 to 20 per gram. The median uncoated fiber count in 20 people with normal lungs and no asbestos exposure history was 3,100 per gram
  • Household contacts ranked fourth in asbestos body levels among exposure categories, with levels comparable to shipyard workers other than insulators and to other asbestos workers
  • Building occupants: asbestos bodies ranged from less than 0.2 to 14 per gram (median 1.9), all within the normal range; they ranked last among exposure categories
  • Building occupants: uncoated fibers ranged from 6,120 to 25,000 per gram, median 9680, which exceeded the 3,100 median of the 20 unexposed people
  • Fiber types, household contacts (95 fibers from 5 cases): 46 (48%) commercial amphiboles (amosite or crocidolite), 10 (10.5%) tremolite, anthophyllite or actinolite, 4 (4.2%) chrysotile, 35 (37%) other
  • Fiber types, building occupants (45 fibers from 4 cases): 2 (4.4%) commercial amphiboles, 9 (20%) noncommercial amphiboles, 1 (2%) chrysotile, 33 (73%) other, mostly nonasbestos minerals such as talc, silica, rutile and aluminum silicates
  • Case 8 (a woman with pleural mesothelioma and parietal pleural plaques who worked in a school): electron microscopy found talc, tremolite, chrysotile, bentonite and perlite in her lung. These are five of the seven components found in the school's acoustical plaster. No more than two of the seven were found in five control subjects
  • The authors judged the acoustical ceiling plaster the most likely source of Case 8's tremolite fibers. They regarded her pleural plaques as evidence that her mesothelioma was asbestos-related
  • The authors stated that building occupants had lung asbestos burdens quite similar to those of people with no known occupational exposure
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that household contacts of asbestos workers often have lung asbestos concentrations similar to some occupationally exposed individuals
• Limitations the authors state:
  • Exposure as a building occupant could not be ruled out among the comparison individuals with no known occupational exposure
  • Not all mesotheliomas are caused by asbestos; spontaneous cases occur
  • Uncoated fiber rankings must be read with the fiber types in mind, because many fibers were not asbestos
  • Further studies are needed to know whether cases like Case 8 occur often enough to be of public concern

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Mesothelioma, Peritoneal mesothelioma.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Mineral Fiber, Environmental Exposure, Asbestos-Containing Material (ACM), Pleural Mesothelioma, Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Mesothelioma among employees with likely contact with in-place asbestos-containing building materials — H.A. Anderson, L.P. Hanrahan, et al. (1991)
• Re: Asbestos exposures in public and commercial buildings — T.P. Sterling, W.L. Rosenbaum, et al. (1994)
• Mortality experience of family contacts of asbestos factory workers — L. Joubert, H. Seidman, et al. (1991)
• Household-contact asbestos neoplastic risk — H.A. Anderson, R. Lilis, et al. (1976)
• A probability model for evaluating building contamination from an environmental event — R.C. Spicer, H.J. Gangloff (2000)
• Mineral fiber content of lungs in patients with mesothelioma seeking compensation in Québec — A. Dufresne, R. Bégin, et al. (1996)

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