Asbestos and Disease, Chapter 9 (Pleural Disease) (1978)

This is a review chapter from a textbook. The authors combined published reports with their own experience at Mount Sinai. The chapter covered how common asbestosis was, how it is diagnosed and how it progresses. Asbestosis here means disease of the lung tissue (parenchymal) and of the pleura, the lining around the lungs. The groups reviewed were miners and millers, factory workers, insulation and construction workers, shipyard workers, and family and neighborhood contacts. Among the Mount Sinai findings, a survey of 1,117 insulation workers showed a marked rise in parenchymal asbestosis with time since first exposure. A 1973-1975 study of family contacts of amosite asbestos workers found X-ray abnormalities in 194 people (39.6%). The authors concluded that where dust levels had been high, asbestosis could be expected in up to 100% of those exposed more than 10 years, more usually 50% of those exposed more than 20 years. They also concluded that some disease could appear after 20 years of exposure even at 5 mppcf. They wrote that as exposure levels fell, disease shifted toward pleural involvement, and that no specific treatment had been found to affect its course. They cautioned that the prevalence data were fragmented and subject to bias.

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 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.