Organ Involvement in Asbestos-Related Disease: Section 1, Pleural Plaques (1978)

This book chapter was a review of published reports on pleural plaques, which are areas of scarring on the inner chest-wall lining. It covered their appearance, possible causes, frequency, health significance and X-ray detection. It did not report a new study. The author wrote that plaques are associated with all types of asbestos fibers. The author also wrote that plaques usually become identifiable on X-rays more than 20 years after exposure, though in some patients they appear sooner. The author stated that how plaques form is unknown. Cited reports found small chrysotile fibers inside plaques. The chapter stated that about 20 percent of people with plaques have X-ray signs of lung fibrosis. It also stated that plaques do not cause symptoms and that lung function is not usually impaired in workers who do not smoke. It summarized other researchers' findings of mesothelioma and lung cancer among shipyard workers with plaques. The author also described a dentist who had used asbestos string for some 33 years. The author concluded that plaques are not premalignant but that their presence may be ominous.

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. 003407.

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.