Revising the British Occupational Hygiene Society asbestos standard: 1968-1982

Our plain-English summary of Revising the British Occupational Hygiene Society asbestos standard: 1968-1982, by M. Greenberg (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2006).

The study

• Author: M. Greenberg
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 2006;49(7):577-604
• Type of article: Historical article
• Cited by: 6 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Abstract

Background: In 1968 the British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) published a chrysotile asbestos hygiene standard. As a consequence of acknowledged inadequacies of the data, it underestimated the risks of exposure, but its influence was international and operated for longer than it merited. Five years later, BOHS reported the standard not to be in need of amending, despite its own doubts and no cognizance having been taken of the cancer hazard. Within months, stung by criticism from Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, industry required it to review the standard, which BOHS continued to do for a number of years before giving up.

Methods: Material obtained for the American Courts by means of legal discovery from an asbestos company's archive, provided information on the membership of the new BOHS committees, and on its operation.

Results: Alterations in the composition of the new committees included importantly the introduction of certain independent scientists, whose rigor militated against the ready production of a new hygiene standard acceptable to industry.

Conclusions: There was a time in Britain when a learned society might with impunity omit to consult the views of workers or their representatives when making value judgments about their health and safety, but consider it proper to accede to industry's decision as to what hygiene standard it would accept. Health and Safety at Work legislation in 1974, established an organization on which industry and labor were represented, with the onus for recommending hygiene standards. For several years the BOHS Asbestos Sub-Committee continued attempting to reconcile the interests of industry, until finally abandoning hygiene standard setting as its mission.

(c) 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

In plain English

This historical review traced BOHS (British Occupational Hygiene Society) efforts, 1968 to 1982, to revise its 1968 chrysotile asbestos standard. The author used incomplete committee and company papers obtained through legal discovery. In 1973 BOHS kept its 2-fiber standard, citing no adverse comments. After Dr. Irving J. Selikoff's criticism, data from a Rochdale asbestos textile factory were updated. Statistician G. Berry's re-analysis estimated a 1% risk of crepitations (crackling lung sounds) at 43 fibers/cm3 years; in 1968 he had put it at 112, with a 90% lower confidence limit of 51. In 1976 the committee secretary proposed 0.9 fibers/cc. J. Peto calculated 0.25 to 0.3 fibers/cc, a level the secretary said industry could not afford. The committee could not agree, was dissolved in 1977, then reformed. A 1979 analysis of two factories, stressing caveats about its data, indicated adverse effects may occur with a probability of about 1% among men exposed to 30 to 90 fiber-years/cc, as measured by Factory A's methods since 1977. The author concluded that scientific rigor prevented a repeat of the 1968 accommodation of industry.

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 review of archival documents (committee minutes, correspondence and internal company papers) obtained by legal discovery
• Who was studied: The BOHS Asbestos Sub-Committee (and its 1977 successor) in Britain, 1968 to 1982, and the asbestos factory data it considered. In the later phase this included Factory A (TBA, Rochdale), 295 men, and Factory B (BBA, Cleckheaton), 351 men and women.
• Exposure: Chrysotile asbestos dust, as covered by the BOHS 1968 hygiene standard of 2 fibers per ml. A 1973 amosite standard is also discussed.
• Main results:
  • In 1973 the BOHS Asbestos Sub-Committee made no change to the 1968 standard. It justified this by having received no adverse comments on it.
  • In 1968 Berry had estimated a 1% risk of crepitations at 112 fibers/cm3 years, with a 90% lower confidence limit of 51 fibers/cm3 years.
  • Berry's re-analysis of the updated factory data estimated a crepitations risk of 9.7% at 112 fibers/cm3 years and a 1% risk at 43 fibers/cm3 years.
  • Under the extreme assumptions of a 5-year lag period and a 50-year half life, Berry's calculations indicated that the 2-fiber standard needed to be reduced to a fortieth.
  • At the September 1976 meeting, the secretary (Roach) proposed a chrysotile standard of 0.9 fibers/cc.
  • At the same meeting Peto calculated that, allowing for disease progression after exposure ended, the standard should be about 0.25 to 0.3 fibers/cc (12 to 15 fiber years). Roach responded that industry could not afford such a low standard.
  • Peto's analysis of 678 men followed to the end of 1974 found the limited data consistent with a doubling of the lung cancer mortality rate 20 years after first exposure.
  • Five cases of pleural mesothelioma occurred in Peto's study period.
  • The sub-committee reached no agreement on the December 1976 draft report and was formally dissolved three months after its January 1977 meeting.
  • The 1979 Institute of Occupational Medicine analysis of data from Factories A and B acknowledged the limits of the data's quality and coverage. It indicated that the adverse effects considered may occur with a probability of about 1% among men with exposures of 30 to 90 fiber-years/cc, as measured by the methods used at Factory A since 1977.
  • In 1978 a committee member (Jacobsen) stated that, after the Health and Safety at Work Act, recommending a standard was not the job of the BOHS group of experts.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the surviving documents show how a learned society first accommodated the interests of an industry. The author also concluded that applying scientific rigor to quantifying workers' risks later prevented that from happening again.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • Only an incomplete collection of the committee's papers was available. An official set of post-1968 minutes and documents was not preserved.
  • There is a substantial gap in the committee minutes from 1970 to 1975.
  • There is no authoritative membership list for the committee reformed in 1977, and its meeting records are incomplete.

Topics

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

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

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