Recherche de corps asbestosiques dans les poumons de la population urbaine en France (1969)

In this short French report, the authors looked for asbestos bodies ("corps asbestosiques") in the lungs of adult city dwellers in France who had lived near factories working with asbestos. They studied 65 cases at the Hôpital Bichat in Paris, 50 cases at the Institut Médico-Légal (forensic institute) in Paris, and 25 cases at the Institut Médico-Légal in Clermont-Ferrand. Lung samples were examined using a technique described by Paul Gross and colleagues. Three different centres, with different experienced staff, all got the same negative result: no asbestos bodies were seen in any case. The authors compared this with American and South African reports and suggested the difference might come from the different composition of talcs. They stated that French talc, from a quarry at Luzenac, showed no asbestos fibres when examined by X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. In contrast, some American talcs contain chrysotile and antigorite, and some Italian talcs contain tremolite. They added that French adults do not usually use cosmetic talc, and offered this as a possible explanation.

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.