Cardiopulmonary Journal Correspondence on the ACCP Report on Environmental Pulmonary Carcinogens (1981)

This item is not a research study. It combines a 1981 letter and scattered, badly scanned excerpts from the 1978 edition of a pocket textbook, Synopsis of Clinical Pulmonary Disease. In the letter, the editor-in-chief of the American College of Chest Physicians' journal asked Raymond L.H. Murphy about a draft report titled "Environmental Pulmonary Carcinogens". That report is not included. The textbook's chapter on the pneumoconioses, by Roger S. Mitchell, has a short passage on asbestos. It said asbestos is used to make clutch facings and brake products, and that milling is quite hazardous unless wet drilling and proper masks are used. It described the tissue reaction as a diffuse, non-nodular pulmonary fibrosis involving the terminal airways, alveoli and pleurae. It said pleural effusions, including effusions on both sides, are common but often overlooked. The process tends to progress after exposure has ended. A figure caption shows a pleural mesothelioma. In the section on talc, the chapter said talc workers' disease is generally attributed to tremolite fibers, and possibly to chrysotile and anthophyllite. Much of the asbestos text is unreadable or cut off.

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 this piece 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.