Reply: No indication that mineral wool causes mesothelioma

Our plain-English summary of Reply: No indication that mineral wool causes mesothelioma, by A. Lacourt (American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 2013).

The study

• Author: A. Lacourt
• Journal: American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine
• Published: 2013;188(7):873-4
• Type of article: Letter, Comment
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This item is a letter, not a new study. The author replied to Dr. Bonde's letter criticizing a French case-control study on pleural mesothelioma and occupational coexposure to asbestos, mineral wool, and silica. The author and colleagues had published that study earlier in this journal. The reply gave no numerical risk estimates. The author argued that comparing the mesothelioma results with an earlier lung cancer study of rock and slag wool production workers was irrelevant, because risk factors and cancer-causing mechanisms differ between the diseases. The author disagreed that the comparison group came from the wrong population. According to the author, both cases and controls came from the French general population, and the two sets of cases (1987–1996 and 1998–2006) showed no significant differences in socioeconomic status. The author said controls were deliberately not matched on socioeconomic status, to avoid overmatching. The author noted the original article had said it was difficult to separate mineral wool or silica effects from asbestos exposure. The author stated that the study did not claim mineral wool causes mesothelioma, and called for further studies.

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: Correspondence: the author's reply to a letter criticizing the author's earlier published case-control study; it gives no numerical risk estimates
• Who was studied: No new population was studied. The reply describes the earlier study's groups: cases from a French hospital-based case-control study (1987–1996) and from the French National Mesothelioma Surveillance Program (1998–2006), and a reference group which, according to the author, came from the French general population
• Exposure: Occupational coexposure to asbestos, mineral wool, and silica, as studied in the earlier article
• Main results:
  • The author argued that comparing the mesothelioma findings with a lung cancer study of rock and slag wool production workers was irrelevant, because risk factors and carcinogenic mechanisms differ between the two diseases
  • The author stated that, because mesothelioma is rare and severe, cases are always hospitalized at diagnosis, so hospital-identified cases arise from the general population
  • The author reported that the two sets of cases (1987–1996 hospital-based study and 1998–2006 surveillance program) showed no significant differences in socioeconomic status
  • The author concluded that the reference group came from the same source population as the cases
  • The author stated that controls were not matched on socioeconomic status, so the matching could not have been unsuccessful
  • The author described matching on socioeconomic status as undesirable overmatching
• The authors' conclusion: The author stated that the study did not claim mineral wool causes mesothelioma, and that its discussion and conclusion should be read as a call for further studies
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author noted that the original article had stated it was difficult to assess the independent effect of mineral wool or silica in the presence of occupational asbestos exposure

Topics

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

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

Related studies

• No indication that mineral wool causes mesothelioma — J.P. Bonde (2013)
• Pleural mesothelioma and occupational coexposure to asbestos, mineral wool, and silica — A. Lacourt, C. Gramond, et al. (2013)
• Risk of lung cancer associated with occupational exposure to mineral wools: updating knowledge from a french population-based case-control study, the ICARE study — F. Guida, S. Paget-Bailly, et al. (2013)
• Mortality among a cohort of US man-made mineral fiber workers: 1985 follow-up — G.M. Marsh, P.E. Enterline, et al. (1990)
• Cytotoxicity of respirable dusts from industrial minerals: comparison of two naturally occurring and two man-made silicates — D. Nadeau, L. Fouquette-Couture, et al. (1987)
• Production of reactive oxygen species by phagocytic cells after exposure to glass wool and stone wool fibres - effect of fibre preincubation in aqueous solution — T. Zoller, W.J. Zeller (2000)

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