Schepers to R. C. Bacon on Occupational Pulmonary Diseases and Carcinoma of the Lung (1971)

This item holds the program and abstracts of a Baylor College of Medicine symposium (Houston, February 25-26, 1977), preceded by a separate 1971 letter to R. T. Vanderbilt Company rating talc and asbestos fibers; it is not a single study. Several abstracts concerned former workers of a Tyler, Texas, plant making amosite pipe insulation in 1954-1972. In a 1971 survey of 62 employees, 8 of 18 men employed ten years or longer had findings compatible with asbestosis. Another presenter reported abnormal lung function tests in 53% of Tyler workers and abnormal chest films in about one-third. A third reported sputum cytology on 678 former workers: five had findings classified as squamous carcinoma, printed as 0.9%. That abstract then describes six patients with squamous cancer cells in their sputa, all chronic cigarette smokers. A separate study examined over 600 household contacts of amosite factory workers. Over 35% had asbestos-type chest x-ray changes, a prevalence statistically significantly different from 326 comparison residents. Four pleural mesotheliomas were found while tracing these contacts. Other talks covered silica, smoking and immunology.

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 this piece 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.