Persons at High Risk of Cancer: An Approach to Cancer Etiology and Control (1973)

This book chapter by Selikoff and Hammond discussed how several factors combine to affect environmental cancer risk, drawing mainly on the authors' own asbestos worker studies. In 370 New York-area asbestos workers followed from 1963 to 1973, the 87 men with no history of cigarette smoking had two lung cancer deaths, and both men smoked pipes or cigars. The 283 men with a history of regular cigarette smoking had 45 lung cancer deaths among 150 deaths. Among 17,800 U.S. and Canadian insulation workers followed from 1967 to 1972, the 9,590 men with a history of cigarette smoking had 179 lung cancer deaths among 640 deaths. The 2,066 men with no history of cigarette smoking had only 2 lung cancer deaths among 93 deaths. The lung cancer excess was concentrated in men more than 20 years from first exposure. In two cohorts, one of them 933 amosite factory workers, mesothelioma deaths rose later than lung cancer deaths. The authors concluded that asbestos workers more than 20 years from onset with a history of cigarette smoking, especially with longer work, are identifiable high-risk groups for whom surveillance programs are warranted. They noted that the benefits of surveillance were not yet known.

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 is a copy from J-M's medical library.

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.