Standards for Occupational Asbestos Exposure (1971)

This 1971 document by I.J. Selikoff and D.A. Holaday discussed regulating workplace asbestos exposure, with attached tables of worker deaths and X-ray findings whose source it did not state. The authors compared Threshold Limit Values (TLVs), or dust concentration limits, with performance standards specifying work practices and controls. They saw serious difficulties in setting a TLV. Significant breathing defects or cancer are usually found only after 20, 30 or more years, and few reliable dust measurements were made 20 to 30 years earlier. Past TLV efforts aimed only at preventing asbestosis, yet mesothelioma can occur after exposure too small to cause X-ray-visible asbestosis. Among 632 workers exposed to asbestos dust 20 years or longer, 45 deaths from cancer of the lung and pleura occurred in 1943 to 1962, against 6.6 expected from US white male rates. Among 230 amosite factory workers followed 1960 to June 1971, there were 105 deaths against 46.4 expected, including 43 cancer deaths against 8.5 expected. The authors concluded that no "safe TLV" for asbestos was known and that performance standards should rapidly be set for every industrial use.

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.