Deaths of Asbestosis Patients (Translation) (1971)

This Soviet study reviewed the causes of death of 90 asbestosis patients from Central Ural asbestos plants who died between 1948 and 1967. Eighty had worked in concentrating mills and the rest in asbestos mining. The article does not say which asbestos fiber type these workers handled. Of the 90, 34 (37.8%) died of cancer, against 13.3% of deaths in the general population over 20. Of these 34, 30 had worked continuously in dust, mostly before 1955. Sixteen (17.8%) died of lung tuberculosis, against 6.1%. Fourteen (15.5%) died of circulatory diseases, against 45.2%. Twelve (13.4%) died of uncomplicated asbestosis. Of the cancer deaths, 23.5% were respiratory cancers and 20.6% stomach cancers. When asbestosis was complicated by cancer, the time from diagnosis to death was 15 to 30 years or more. For most patients without cancer it was under 15 years. Five tuberculosis deaths were in people who began dusty work at 16 to 18 and died at 29 to 42. The authors concluded that these patients died of cancer and lung tuberculosis significantly more often than townspeople over 20.

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.