Asbestosis in Insulation Workers (Translation) (1959)

This English translation of a German article described three shipyard insulation workers aged 55, 48 and 38. They were referred to the Kiel university medical clinic with chronic bronchitis that had resisted treatment. Their work with asbestos-containing mats, cloth and mattresses had lasted 23, 21 and 10 years respectively. The authors found what they called asbestosis particles in the sputum of all three. All three also had reduced vital capacity, which the authors read as a restriction of breathing. The 38-year-old also showed signs of airway obstruction. Typical X-ray signs of lung fibrosis appeared only in the 55-year-old, who also had bloody fluid around the right lung. No tumor cells were found, although the authors feared cancer. The authors concluded that asbestosis had been overlooked for three reasons: no job history was taken, no extensive sputum tests were made, and no exact lung function testing was used to explain the gap between symptoms and findings. They added that X-rays alone are not sufficient to find beginning asbestosis in time. This translation omitted the lung function table.

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.