Pneumoconiosis (1960)

This item was not a research study. It was a short encyclopedia entry on pneumoconiosis, signed with the author's initials and printed next to unrelated entries on pneumatic tools, pneumatism and pneumonia. It reported no original data. The author described pneumoconiosis as a term for a variety of industrial lung diseases caused by breathing dust particles. The author stated that silicosis had for many years been its chief form, and that emphasis was shifting to other forms. Asbestosis was listed in the entry's classification table, though most of the scanned table was unreadable. The author wrote that respiratory tract cancer is closely associated with exposures to monochromates, asbestos, beryllium, nickel, arsenic and radioactive particles. The author also wrote that some pneumoconioses may become arrested once exposure stops, while others, such as silicosis and asbestosis, progress inexorably. According to the entry, precise diagnosis depends largely on X-rays, and most severe pneumoconioses are irreversible once established. The entry described measures for silicosis and berylliosis and stated that no specific therapy was available for other pneumoconioses.

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. It was among the papers J-M kept in its medical library without an index entry.

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.