The Cancer Connection: Job-Caused Cancer (1977)

This is a chapter from a general-audience book, not an original research study. It retold Dr. Irving Selikoff's earlier study of 632 insulation workers; these are that study's results, not the chapter's. Despite heavy scanning damage, the chapter appears to report forty-five respiratory cancer deaths among those workers where six or seven were expected. It also appears to say that about 18 percent of all Americans die of cancer, while among asbestos insulation workers the share approaches 50 percent. It further appears to say that about 6 percent of long-term asbestos workers die of stomach and colon cancers. Some other figures cannot be read. The chapter also told of a man who worked three months in a West Coast shipyard, developed mesothelioma twenty-seven years later, and died seventeen months after that. The author criticized the asbestos standard adopted on June 6, 1972 by OSHA, the federal job-safety agency. The author wrote that it would have only marginal impact on cancer rates among exposed workers. The chapter also discussed another carcinogen, bis(chloromethyl) ether (BCME). It argued for a permit system for carcinogens and for more OSHA funding.

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.