Presence of fibers in the urine of a baboon gavaged with chrysotile asbestos

Our plain-English summary of Presence of fibers in the urine of a baboon gavaged with chrysotile asbestos, by W.H. Hallenbeck, K.J. Patel-Mandlik (Environmental Research, 1979).

The study

• Authors: W.H. Hallenbeck, K.J. Patel-Mandlik
• Journal: Environmental Research
• Published: 1979;20(2):335-40
• Cited by: 18 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Abstract

Preliminary evidence is presented which indicates that chrysotile asbestos fibers can be recovered in the urine of a baboon which had been gavaged with chrysotile. This result supports the contention that ingested asbestos fibers can penetrate the gastrointestinal tract of man.

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

In plain English

This was an animal experiment. The authors tested whether chrysotile asbestos given by mouth could pass through the gut and appear in urine. One 2-year-old female baboon weighing 6 kg was studied over 36 days. On Days 14 through 17 it was given 30 mg of chrysotile in water each day by stomach tube, a cumulative dose of 20 mg per kg. Urine was collected by catheter, seven samples before dosing and 11 after, and examined by electron microscopy. Chrysotile levels in the urine were quite low before dosing and quite high on some days after, especially Day 21. The authors reported that this difference was statistically significant (P between 0.01 and 0.05). Some fibers in the urine looked degraded. Fibers found after dosing were 0.14 to 2.64 micrometers long, and short fibers were more common in the urine than in the material fed. The authors concluded this was preliminary evidence that chrysotile fibers can be recovered from the urine of a baboon gavaged with chrysotile. They noted that the dose is difficult to relate to what humans receive.

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: Animal experiment (single animal), comparing urine samples collected before and after oral gavage over a 36-day period
• Who was studied: One 2-year-old female baboon (Papio species, printed as 'Papio antrbis' in the scanned text) weighing 6 kg, studied at the University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago
• Exposure: Chrysotile asbestos suspended in filtered water, given by stomach tube at 30 mg per day on Days 14 through 17; cumulative 4-day dose of 20 mg/kg
• Main results:
  • In the urine of the one baboon, chrysotile concentrations were quite low before gavage and quite high on certain postgavage days, especially the fourth day after gavage (Day 21)
  • By the Mann-Whitney test, the difference between pre- and postgavage urine chrysotile concentrations was statistically significant (P between 0.01 and 0.05)
  • Some fibers in the urine samples were morphologically degraded. About 20% of observed fibers were barely identifiable (Class C) and were excluded; only Class A and B fibers were counted in the tables
  • Fibers recovered in postgavage urine ranged from 0.14 to 2.64 micrometers in length, with an average of 0.44 and a median of 0.36 micrometers
  • Of 75 fibers recovered in postgavage urine, 19% were bundles of two or more fibrils
  • Short fibers made up a greater share of the fibers in postgavage urine than of the chrysotile fed to the baboon
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that they had presented preliminary evidence that chrysotile fibers can be recovered from the urine of a baboon gavaged with chrysotile, and that this corroborates earlier work by Cook and Olson (1979) on humans
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The dose given is difficult to relate to human exposure, because drinking-water asbestos levels are usually reported in fibers per liter and mass-to-fiber conversion factors vary
  • Not all ingested fibers should be assumed to have been excreted in the urine
  • The mechanism by which fibers were degraded and shortened on their way to the urine was not established

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Chrysotile.

Related studies

• Analyses of tissue, blood, and urine samples from a baboon gavaged with chrysotile and crocidolite asbestos — W.H. Hallenbeck, D.R. Markey, et al. (1981)
• The effects of asbestos-cement dust inhalation on baboons — B. Goldstein, I. Webster, et al. (1978)
• Characterization of asbestos fibers in lungs and mesotheliomatous tissues of baboons following long-term inhalation — K. Hiroshima, Y. Murai, et al. (1993)
• Use of quantitative analysis of urine to assess exposure to asbestos fibers in drinking water in the Puget Sound region — E.S. Boatman, T. Merrill, et al. (1983)
• A comparison of the effects of exposure of baboons to crocidolite and fibrous-glass dusts — B. Goldstein, R.E. Rendall, et al. (1983)
• Malignant mesothelioma induced in baboons by inhalation of amosite asbestos — I. Webster, B. Goldstein, et al. (1993)

Browse more research in Environmental Research, or return to medical research.