Royal Naval Dockyards Asbestosis Research Project: Survey of Registered Asbestos Workers (1977)

The study population was the 990 male Registered Asbestos Workers employed inside Devonport, Chatham, Portsmouth and Rosyth Royal Naval Dockyards, counted in 1972 and 1973. Each dockyard had been required to register people who had worked directly with asbestos, full or part-time, for regular medical checks. The yards used different criteria for inclusion. Of the 990 men, 92.4 per cent had a large chest X-ray, 93.5 per cent an interview and 92.8 per cent lung function tests. On X-ray, non-smokers showed less pleural thickening and pulmonary fibrosis than smokers. Evidence that findings rose with exposure was limited. For pleural thickening it was mainly in men aged 40-59. For pleural calcification it was only in men over 60 exposed for more than 20 years. For pulmonary fibrosis there was little. Smoking had a much bigger effect than age on cough and phlegm. The authors concluded that the selection of these workers meant asbestos-linked abnormalities occurred only in older men exposed before protective measures were introduced in 1969. They cited dilution by intermittently exposed men and medical selection since 1969. They called comparisons between yards of dubious value.

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. 004048.