Asbestosis (1948)

This is a chapter on asbestosis from an occupational medicine textbook dated 1948 in the citation. It is a descriptive overview, not a study, and much of it reports other researchers' work. It described exposure in packing, insulating, fireproofing and textile trades. It stated that the first sign is shortness of breath (dyspnea), with a usually dry cough. It said the lung scarring is diffuse and basal, unlike the nodular upper-lung scarring of silicosis, and that the pleura is thickened. It quoted Gardner of the Saranac Laboratory, who concluded that asbestos irritates the lungs mechanically as stiff fibres. In Gardner's inhalation experiments, very finely ground chrysotile produced no fibrosis, while long-fibre dust at one-third the concentration produced fibrosis after about two years. Citing Pendergrass, the chapter said X-ray changes lie mostly in the lower lungs and that early asbestosis cannot be reliably diagnosed by X-ray. It estimated ("it is felt") that asbestosis takes on average seven to nine years to develop at fairly high concentrations and fifteen to twenty at lower ones, and that it progresses even after exposure ends.

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. 002853. Barry Castleman cites it in chapter 4, "Thresholds and Standards", of Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects (5th ed., 2005); see Reading Castleman.

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.