The newer pneumoconioses (with special regard to foundry risks)

Our plain-English summary of The newer pneumoconioses (with special regard to foundry risks), by W.W. Jones (The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, 1967).

The study

• Author: W.W. Jones
• Journal: The Annals of Occupational Hygiene
• Published: 1967;10(3):241-8
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This article was a conference paper by a member of a Pneumoconiosis Medical Panel in Birmingham, England. It reviewed lung diseases caused by dust, with emphasis on foundry work, and did not report a new study. The author described earlier surveys showing that pneumoconiosis occurred in nearly all foundry jobs. The author also gave single cases from the panel's experience, such as a carborundum polisher found after death to have mixed dust pneumoconiosis. On asbestos, the author summarized other researchers' work linking it to lung cancer and to mesothelioma. This included Sleggs and Wagner (1960) in South Africa and Selikoff and colleagues (1963) in the United States, where mainly chrysotile was used. The author cited autopsy surveys finding asbestos-like bodies in the lungs of many city residents, for example 47 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women in Pittsburg. The author suggested that talc, which contains the fibrous mineral tremolite and is widely used in dusting powders, might explain part of these findings. The author knew of no evidence that the asbestos-like minerals in talc were equally associated with cancer, but also of no evidence to the contrary.

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: Narrative review (conference paper) drawing on published surveys and the author's own case experience; no new study
• Who was studied: No study population of its own. The author reviewed published work on foundry workers and other dust-exposed workers, and described individual cases seen by the Pneumoconiosis Medical Panel, Birmingham
• Exposure: Foundry dusts containing silica; iron oxide; graphite; talc (including its fibrous tremolite content); hard metal (tungsten carbide and cobalt); asbestos, with crocidolite and chrysotile named
• Main results:
  • In a cited 1960 survey of small iron foundries (McLaughlin), the overall incidence of category 3+A+B was 2.9 per cent
  • In one case from the author's panel, a carborundum polisher who worked long overtime and ate at his workplace was found after death to have mixed dust pneumoconiosis; the author attributed this to the length of exposure
  • The author described a relatively uncommon lung condition as common among workers who make or grind hard metal
  • Cited work: Sleggs and Wagner (1960) drew attention to the association between mesothelioma and asbestos exposure
  • Cited autopsy surveys: asbestos-like bodies were found in the lungs of 47 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women in Pittsburg, U.S.A.
  • Cited study (Hourihane et al.): asbestos bodies were identified in 20-30 per cent of necropsy subjects
  • Cited X-ray series of talc workers: talc contains fibrous minerals similar to asbestos, and over 6 per cent of these workers had 'talc plaques'
  • The author reported that 'diffuse mesothelioma' had become a scheduled disease for compensation in Britain in 1966, for claimants with industrial asbestos exposure on or after 5th July 1948
• The authors' conclusion: The author's view was that talc might account for part of the widespread asbestos-like bodies found in urban populations, so the search for asbestos sources might be partly misdirected. The author knew of no evidence that the asbestos-like minerals in talc were equally associated with cancer, but also of no evidence to the contrary.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author presented the interpretation of the conflicting foundry survey figures as suggestions only
  • The author noted that the panel's cases were a highly selected group
  • In the discussion, the author said talc was not proposed as the complete explanation for the asbestos bodies, only as part of it

Topics

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

Related studies

• Pathologica, physiological, and radiological correlations in the pneumoconioses — E.A. Gaensler, C.B. Carrington, et al. (1972)
• Between- and within-reader variability in the assessment of pleural abnormality using the ILO 1980 international classification of pneumoconioses — J. Bourbeau, P. Ernst (1988)
• The past and present of pneumoconioses — P. De Vuyst, P. Camus (2000)
• The classic pneumoconioses: new epidemiological and laboratory observations — A.S. Laney, D.N. Weissman (2012)
• The second diagnosis: the role of the pathologist in identifying pneumoconioses in lungs excised for tumor — E.J. Mark (1981)
• Railways and asbestos in Japan (1928-1987)--epidemiology of pleural plaques, malignancies and pneumoconioses- — Y. Hosoda, Y. Hiraga, et al. (2008)

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