A Trial of Techniques for Counting Asbestos Bodies in Tissue (1973)

This article reported a small methods trial, which the author called an experiment of limited scope, comparing ways of counting asbestos bodies in lung tissue. Tissue came from four people. Two had asbestosis. The other two had no occupational exposure to asbestos but lived in an area where about a quarter of post-mortem cases had asbestos bodies in the lungs. Eight blocks were taken from each person, from the upper and lower zones of both lungs, with and without pleural surface, giving 32 blocks. Pathologists counted bodies in 6 or 30 micrometre sections, stained or unstained, and one counted bodies after the tissue was digested with KOH. Counts varied tenfold, and the variation appeared due more to the observer than to the technique. All observers and techniques distinguished the four cases equally well. Only one case showed a marked difference between upper and lower lung. Digestion counts correlated well with thin-section counts. The author concluded that counts carry an uncertainty of about an order of magnitude and that more specific scanning rules could probably reduce differences between observers.

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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 pages from a book 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.