Pulmonary ferruginous bodies in city dwellers. A study of their central fiber

Our plain-English summary of Pulmonary ferruginous bodies in city dwellers. A study of their central fiber, by P. Gross, R.T. DeTreville, M.N. Haller (Archives of Environmental Health, 1969).

The study

• Authors: P. Gross, R.T. DeTreville, M.N. Haller
• Journal: Archives of Environmental Health
• Published: 1969;19(2):186-8
• Cited by: 29 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. 001424).

In plain English

This laboratory study used electron microscopy and electron diffraction to examine the central fiber, or core, of ferruginous bodies. These are coated fibers in the lung, sometimes called "asbestos bodies." They were taken from the lungs of 28 people in Pittsburgh who had not been exposed to asbestos at work. The authors reasoned that if these bodies came from asbestos dust in city air, some cores should be chrysotile. None of the 28 cores showed the hollow, tubular structure typical of chrysotile. Measurements of their diffraction patterns, accurate to plus or minus 1%, did not identify any of them as chrysotile, amosite or crocidolite. The cores were crystalline, which the authors said rules out fibrous glass, glass wool and other glassy materials. For comparison, hamsters were injected into the windpipe with 25 mg of brake-drum dust, and the cores of their ferruginous bodies gave patterns characteristic of chrysotile. The authors concluded that chrysotile was excluded from the human cores. They could not identify what the fibers were and said this would require further testing.

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: Laboratory study using electron microscopy and electron diffraction of the cores of ferruginous bodies, with a comparison experiment in hamsters
• Who was studied: 28 ferruginous bodies isolated from the lungs of 28 urban dwellers in Pittsburgh who were not occupationally exposed to asbestos. The article cites the authors' earlier autopsy study as the source of the bodies. Ferruginous bodies from hamster lungs were also examined for comparison.
• Exposure: Human subjects had no occupational asbestos exposure; the question was whether the bodies' cores were asbestos, particularly chrysotile, from urban air. In the comparison experiment, hamsters received an intratracheal injection of 25 mg of iron-free brake-drum dust and were killed 12 months later.
• Main results:
  • None of the cores of the 28 ferruginous bodies from human lungs showed the hollow, tubular structure characteristic of chrysotile.
  • Diffraction measurements, accurate to plus or minus 1%, showed that none of the human-lung cores were identifiable as chrysotile, amosite or crocidolite.
  • The cores were crystalline, which the authors said rules out fibrous glass, glass wool and other vitreous materials in this sample.
  • In hamsters injected with brake-drum dust, the central filament of the ferruginous bodies gave electron diffraction patterns characteristic of chrysotile.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that chrysotile was excluded as a constituent of the cores. They considered this significant because, in their reasoning, if asbestos dust had caused these bodies, some cores should have been chrysotile.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The authors did not identify what the core fibers in the human ferruginous bodies were.
  • The authors said identification of the fibers must await further electron diffraction information, and possibly electron microprobe measurements.

Topics

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

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Ferruginous body.

Related studies

• Fibrous dust particles and ferruginous bodies. Methods for quantitating them and some results from the lungs of city dwellers — P. Gross, J. Tuma, et al. (1970)
• Ferruginous (asbestos) bodies in the lungs of rural dwellers, urban dwellers, and patients with pulmonary neoplasms — P.H. Breedin, D.H. Buss (1976)
• Pulmonary fibrosis and ferruginous bodies associated with exposure to synthetic fibers — A.J. Ghio, W. Funkhouser, et al. (2006)
• Relationships between ferruginous bodies and uncoated asbestos fibers in lung tissue — R.F. Dodson, M. O'Sullivan, et al. (1996)
• A method for extracting ferruginous bodies from sputum and pulmonary tissue — M.J. Smith, B. Naylor (1972)
• Ferruginous bodies and pulmonary fibrosis in dead low to moderately exposed asbestos cement workers: histological examination — L.G. Johansson, M.P. Albin, et al. (1987)

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