Results of the Most Comprehensive Scientific Study on the Effects of Asbestos Dust Exposure (QAMA Bulletin) (1980)

This is not a research paper. It is a 1980 newsletter article published by L'Association des Mines d'Amiante du Québec, a Quebec asbestos mining association, describing a mortality study led by J.C. McDonald whose final report was summarized in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine. According to the bulletin, the study followed 11379 people (10 939 men and 440 women), born between 1891 and 1920, who had worked in the Quebec chrysotile asbestos industry. Their dust exposure and smoking habits were estimated and compared with their causes of death. The bulletin reported that deaths rose with exposure for asbestosis, lung cancer, cancer of the colon and rectum, respiratory tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases. The rise was clearest for asbestosis and lung cancer. Within each smoking group, lung cancer risk rose with exposure, and it was highest in heavy smokers. The bulletin attributed to the study the claim that the lung cancer risk of a worker continuously exposed to 1 fibre per cc is equivalent to the risk of smoking a few cigarettes a week. It concluded that an acceptable dust level could now be set. Exposure levels before 1949 had to be estimated from interviews.

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.