Characteristics and Etiology of Pleural Asbestosis (1978)

This book chapter was a review, not a new study. The authors described the non-cancerous changes in the pleura (the lining around the lungs) caused by inhaling asbestos dust: pleural thickening, pleural effusion, hyaline plaques and calcified plaques. They drew on published reports and on experience from studies at Mount Sinai. Among the reports reviewed, plaques were found in Finnish farm dwellers with no apparent occupational exposure. In a Polish district with amphibole asbestos deposits but no mining, 11 out of 3,826 persons examined by X-ray had bilateral pleural calcifications, but the authors noted that occupational histories were not provided. In a Turkish area where chrysotile was used to paint houses, the rate reached 14% in one village of 589 people. In a London Hospital autopsy series, 29 of 36 cases had no history of exposure. The authors noted that routine X-ray films greatly underestimate pleural calcification. The authors concluded that the greater the opportunity for exposure, the more likely the severe forms of pleural reaction are. They said the question of why only some people with very low exposure develop the disease remained entirely open.

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.

From J-M's medical library

This copy comes from the Johns-Manville medical library. J-M listed it in its medical library index as no. 004069.

We publish pages from a book for research and commentary: it shows what the medical literature in a leading asbestos company's own library said on the subject, and when. Our summary above is our own reading of it. The copyright stays with the publisher.