Everything Doesn't Cause Cancer

This document is not a research study. It is a public question-and-answer brochure about the causes and prevention of cancer and about laboratory animal tests that identify cancer-causing substances. The citation gives no author, publisher or date. It reports no new data. The brochure stated that cancers in people usually appear 5 to 40 years after exposure, and that cancers of the liver, lung or bladder may not appear until 30 years after exposure to vinyl chloride, asbestos or benzidine. It said that people exposed to tobacco smoke or asbestos develop, after many years, a higher frequency of cancer of the lung and other organs than unexposed people. It also said that asbestos workers who smoke face a cancer risk far higher than adding the two risks together would predict. As an example of cancer after very low-level exposure, it said that asbestos brought home on the clothing of asbestos workers has caused fatal cancers, but the text is cut off before saying in whom. The brochure said there is no adequate evidence of a safe threshold for any carcinogen. It concluded that exposure to carcinogens should be reduced or eliminated.

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.