The British approach to asbestos standard setting: 1898-2000

Our plain-English summary of The British approach to asbestos standard setting: 1898-2000, by M. Greenberg (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2004).

The study

• Author: M. Greenberg
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 2004;46(5):534-41
• Type of article: Historical article
• Cited by: 6 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Abstract

Background: The asbestos industry started in the late 1870s, and the first accounts of severe respiratory disease in its workers were published in England (1898, 1906), France (1907), and Italy (1908). For a hundred years, a series of increasingly lower standards were set for asbestos in Britain: initially they purported to prevent asbestosis, and latterly to reduce asbestosis and malignancies to acceptable levels.

Methods: Published accounts of how British asbestos exposure standards came to be derived are reviewed in the light of archival materials originated by industry and government.

Results: The earliest standard, of necessity, was not evidence based and while subsequent standards purported to relate doses to effects, the indifferent quality of the measurement of dose, and the poor discrimination of effects, militated against arriving at a standard in which trust should be placed. Each successive standard that was accepted, conformed to what could be achieved in production processes, as far as it was reasonably practicable on technological and economic grounds.

Conclusions: For the better part of a hundred years, confidence was misplaced in the ability of process engineers and physicians to protect workers against asbestos. Finally, deciding that asbestos was neither technologically nor economically essential, and was unsafe in use, Europe issued a Directive, to which Britain will conform, that will virtually ban it use throughout the Community by 2006.

Copyright 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

In plain English

This article was a historical review, by a single author, of how Britain set exposure standards for asbestos between 1898 and 2000. The author reviewed published accounts of how the standards were derived alongside industry and government archives, including Turner and Newall papers obtained through legal discovery. The 1931 standard, the 'dust datum', took the dustiness of flyer spinning as its benchmark. It rested on a survey of 363 of about 2,200 workers and stayed in use for 40 years. The 1968 British Occupational Hygiene Society standard for chrysotile was based on an estimate that, after 50 years at an average of 2 fibers per milliliter over 40-hour working weeks, fewer than 2% of workers would develop early minor signs of lung disease. The author reported that industry pressed for 2 fibers rather than the 1 fiber first suggested. A later government advisory committee recommended a limit of 1 fiber/ml for chrysotile. The author concluded that each standard reflected what was practicable on technological and economic grounds, and that confidence in protecting workers was misplaced for most of a century.

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 published accounts and archival materials from industry and government
• Who was studied: British asbestos workers, mainly in asbestos textile factories, and the bodies that set British asbestos exposure standards, 1898 to 2000
• Exposure: Airborne asbestos dust at work, especially chrysotile in asbestos textile processes such as spinning; the successive British exposure standards
• Main results:
  • The data behind the 1930 standard came from a survey of 363 workers out of an estimated industry total of about 2,200
  • The 'dust datum' standard was misunderstood to guarantee safety and continued to apply for 40 years
  • The 1968 BOHS chrysotile standard estimated that, after 50 years at an average of 2 fibers per milliliter over 40-hour working weeks, fewer than 2% of workers would develop early minor signs of lung disease
  • Industry members of the BOHS committee were instructed to hold out for a 2 fiber standard instead of the 1 fiber standard first suggested
  • The Advisory Committee on Asbestos recommended a control limit for chrysotile of 1 fiber/ml. Its advisers estimated excess total mortality from asbestosis and lung cancer at that level of 0.4 to 2.0% in the Canadian data, 0.8 to 4% in the American data and 1.0 to 5.0% in the British data
  • Crocidolite use was officially discontinued, the asbestos spray process was banned, and exposure to amosite was severely limited
  • Each accepted standard conformed to what production processes could achieve, as far as was reasonably practicable on technological and economic grounds
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that for most of a hundred years confidence was misplaced in the ability of process engineers and physicians to protect workers against asbestos
• Limitations the authors state:
  • No archive of the BOHS committee's minutes exists. The account of its revision attempt was pieced together from one company's records.
  • Converting older dust measures to fibers per milliliter is highly uncertain

Topics

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

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Asbestos Exposure.

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• Asbestos and cancer: an early warning to the British TUC — N.J. Wikeley (1992)
• Asbestos, lung cancer and mesothelioma in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine — A. Newman Taylor (2009)

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