Asbestos Air Pollution in Urban Areas (1970)

This conference paper was presented at an American Medical Association air pollution conference in 1970. It was largely a review of earlier reports linking asbestos to disease in people who did not work with asbestos, with some new findings from the authors' New York laboratory. In a series of 3,000 New York autopsies, the authors reported asbestos bodies in the lungs in 1,449 cases, and thin fibers less than 1.0 micron across in 1,038 cases. In 28 cases examined by electron microscopy, chrysotile fibrils were found in every specimen. In 24 of these 28, the numbers were greater than background contamination could explain. The authors concluded that chrysotile was a common contaminant of New York City residents' lungs. Preliminary air sampling found a background of chrysotile in the air. Samples from Manhattan tended to be higher than those from other boroughs, and levels were considerably higher near construction sites. The authors noted that fireproofing containing 10 to 30% asbestos had commonly been sprayed in Manhattan. They called their data preliminary and said few data existed to judge what the lung findings meant for health.

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. 004776.

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.