Asbestos in public water supplies: discussion of future problems

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos in public water supplies: discussion of future problems, by John P. Hills, Messenger (1979).

The study

• Authors: John P. Hills, Messenger
• Published: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, pp. 573-574 (first pages; ISSN 0077-8923/79/0330-0573) (1979)
• Type of article: Conference paper
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This article was not a research study. It was a discussion paper by an attorney, published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1979, on future problems with asbestos in public drinking water, and it reported no new data. The author had worked as a Federal government attorney in the Reserve Mining Company case, which concerned amosite asbestos in the drinking water of Duluth, Minnesota. The author described a "reciprocal risk theory," drawn from that case and from the Ethyl Corporation lead case. Under this theory, action should be taken when many people are exposed to a possible serious illness such as cancer, even if the probability of harm is uncertain. The author argued that studies of the Duluth population would probably reveal nothing, because that population lies within a larger one that already had the highest stomach cancer rate in the nation. The author also described criminal indictments of chemical companies, not asbestos companies, over withheld or misrepresented data. The author stated a view that the asbestos industry had misused scientists and scientific data. The author concluded that the main problem to be expected was societal inertia.

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.

What the study did and found

• Design: Opinion and discussion paper by an attorney, based on the author's legal experience; no data collected or analyzed
• Who was studied: No study population. The paper discusses the drinking water supply of Duluth, Minnesota as an example.
• Exposure: Asbestos in drinking water, specifically amosite asbestos in the Duluth, Minnesota water supply (the subject of the Reserve Mining Company case)
• Main results:
  • The author described the courts in the Ethyl Corporation and Reserve Mining Company cases as treating risk and harm as reciprocals, which the author calls the "reciprocal risk theory" and advocates.
  • The author argued that a study of the Duluth population exposed to amosite in drinking water was flawed and would probably reveal nothing, because that population lies within a larger one with the highest stomach cancer rate in the nation.
  • The author gave a view, based on the author's own experience, that the asbestos industry had misused scientists and scientific data. This is an opinion, not a study finding.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the main problem to be expected with asbestos-contaminated drinking water is societal inertia, meaning that society will continue to do nothing.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Amosite, Stomach Cancer.

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