Occupational Cancer A Challenge to the Physician (1949)

This publication from the New York State Department of Health is a leaflet for practicing physicians. It is not a research study and reports no new data. The New York State Occupational Cancer Committee wrote it to encourage doctors to take careful job histories from cancer patients and to report suspected occupational cancers. The leaflet stated that occupational cancers usually follow prolonged exposure and may appear after a long latent period. For that reason, it said a patient's work history must be traced back to the first job. It offered to investigate suspected cases in the workplace. It contained a table classifying suspected cancer-causing agents as doubtful (Class D) or established (Class E). It also said agents on the list might later be dropped as new data became available. Asbestos is listed in the bibliography under the respiratory system. However, the copy of the agent table supplied for this summary is too garbled to show how asbestos was classified. The authors concluded that a complete occupational history is indispensable to developing useful data on occupational cancer.

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.