Report to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission by the Chronic Hazard Advisory Panel on Asbestos (1983)

In July 1983 a seven-member advisory panel reported to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on asbestos. The report was a review of published human, animal and laboratory studies. It also analyzed dose-response data from eleven studies of asbestos workers. The Panel found that asbestos causes lung cancer and mesothelioma, that risk rises with exposure, and that there was no evidence of a safe threshold dose. Estimates of how fast lung cancer risk rises with dose varied almost 100-fold between studies, and fiber type could not explain the difference. The Panel assumed a straight-line dose-response with no threshold. On that basis it calculated ranges of lifetime risk of death from cancer caused by continuous exposure to 0.01 fibers per ml. For male smokers exposed continuously for 70 years from birth, these were 55.6 to 557.3 per 100,000 for mesothelioma and 49.0 to 489.9 per 100,000 for lung cancer. Panel members disagreed about the evidence for other cancers. The Panel concluded that asbestos at all levels of exposure should be regarded as a potential human carcinogen. It stressed that its risk estimates were very uncertain.

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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. 004534. Barry Castleman cites it in chapter 10, "Historical Research on Toxic Substances", of Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects (5th ed., 2005); see Reading Castleman.