Reginald Tage: a UK asbestos prophet--a postscript

Our plain-English summary of Reginald Tage: a UK asbestos prophet--a postscript, by M. Greenberg (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1993).

The study

• Author: M. Greenberg
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 1993;24(5):521-4
• Type of article: Historical article
• Cited by: 3 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This historical commentary added to an earlier account (Wikeley, 1992) of Reginald Tage, a former medical student who investigated asbestos disease at the Cape Asbestos factory at Barking and reported his surveys to the Trades Union Congress in January 1932. The author reproduced a factory inspector's minute of 3 June 1931 describing Tage's respirator experiments. In Tage's tests, 60 layers of cellulose fabric stopped tobacco smoke and 3 stopped amosite fibers; Tage recommended 12 layers. Tage's mouth was washed before and after a two-hour test in the grinding department, and no asbestos fibres were found in either washing. His report listed 11 autopsies since 1929 on people who had worked at the Barking factory (2 males, 9 females). It estimated about 160 present and past employees with asbestosis and noted 3 cases of cancer as a complication of asbestosis. No patent or manufacturer record of the respirator was found. The author noted that the tests did not account for fibers too small for microscopes then available. The author concluded that failing to use Tage's work was another lost opportunity.

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: Historical commentary based on archival documents (a postscript to an earlier historical article)
• Who was studied: Reginald Tage, a former medical student, and his work at the Cape Asbestos Company factory at Barking, UK, as described in a Factory Inspectorate minute of 3 June 1931 and in papers sent to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in January 1932
• Exposure: Asbestos dust at the Cape Asbestos works (amosite was used in Tage's filter tests), and respirators designed by Tage to protect against it
• Main results:
  • In Tage's tests, 60 layers of cellulose fabric stopped tobacco smoke and 3 layers stopped amosite fibers; Tage recommended a final thickness of 12 layers
  • Tage's mouth was washed out with distilled water before and after a two-hour test of the respirator in the Cape Asbestos grinding department, and no asbestos fibres were found in either washing
  • For very dusty work, Tage modified a gas mask to filter air through 60 layers of fabric and wore it for three-quarters of an hour in the factory's dust chamber
  • In a minute to the TUC dated 25 January 1932, Tage stated that he took about 100 sputum tests and caught over 60 rats for examination
  • Tage's report listed 11 autopsies since 1929 on people who had worked at the Barking factory: 2 males and 9 females, with an average length of employment of 8 years
  • Tage's report estimated about 160 present and past employees known to have asbestosis
  • Tage's report ended by noting 3 cases of cancer as a complication of asbestosis
  • A letter from Legge stated that Tage had satisfied himself of the greater risk from amosite
  • No patent application or patent for a respirator in Tage's name was found in Patent Office files
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the failure to make use of Tage's vision and energies was another in a series of lost opportunities in the history of asbestos
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The respirator testing of the time did not account for fibers too small to be seen with the microscope techniques then available
  • The archival accounts of Tage's activities are brief and lack follow-up
  • Much of the respirator maker's historic records were lost to bombing during the war

Topics

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

Related studies

• Classical syndromes in occupational medicine: the Montague Murray case — M. Greenberg (1982)
• Sixty years on: the price of assembling military gas masks in 1940 — J.C. McDonald, J.M. Harris, et al. (2006)
• Lung fiber burden in the Nottingham gas mask cohort — G. Berry, F. Pooley, et al. (2009)
• Workplace protection factors of HSE approved negative pressure full-facepiece dust respirators during asbestos stripping: preliminary findings — S.N. Tannahill, R.J. Willey, et al. (1990)
• Physiological and subjective responses to working in disposable protective coveralls and respirators commonly used by the asbestos abatement industry — M.K. White, T.K. Hodous, et al. (1989)
• Evaluation of respirator filters for asbestos fibers — Y.S. Cheng, T.D. Holmes, et al. (2006)

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