Battling Occupational Diseases: Dr. Irving J. Selikoff Talks About an On-Going Struggle

Our plain-English summary of Battling Occupational Diseases: Dr. Irving J. Selikoff Talks About an On-Going Struggle, by I.J. Selikoff, G.M. Martin (1978).

The study

• Authors: I.J. Selikoff, G.M. Martin
• Published: Job Safety and Health (Interview) February 1978
• 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 was not a research study. It was a magazine interview, published in Job Safety and Health in February 1978, in which writer G.M. Martin questioned Dr. Irving J. Selikoff of Mt Sinai School of Medicine. It presented no original research data of its own. Dr. Selikoff said that substances used in workplaces for decades were often assumed safe simply because they were familiar, citing vinyl chloride and DBCP. The interviewer referred to one of Dr. Selikoff's studies noting that the British shipbuilding and ship-repairing industry was rejuvenated earlier, in 1935, than the American one. Dr. Selikoff said British reports should have put the United States on notice and that this period of grace had not been used well. Dr. Selikoff said it could not yet be said with complete assurance what proportion of people who worked in shipyards from 1940 to 1975 were at risk from then to beyond the year 2000, or which trades faced the greatest risks. Dr. Selikoff also described Japanese data on leukemia, said industry could trace workers exposed 25 to 30 years earlier, and said OSHA's worker education work had hardly begun.

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: Interview (question-and-answer magazine article); not a research study and presents no original research data
• Who was studied: No study population. One person was interviewed: Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, professor of community medicine at Mt Sinai School of Medicine, interviewed by writer G.M. Martin. Shipyard workers employed from 1940 to 1975 were discussed.
• Exposure: Discussed in general terms: past asbestos exposure of shipyard workers (fiber type not specified), along with vinyl chloride, DBCP, polychlorinated biphenyls, hexachlorophene, radiation and benzene
• Main results:
  • Dr. Selikoff said agents present in workplaces for one to three decades were often assumed to be safe because they were familiar
  • The interviewer cited one of Dr. Selikoff's studies noting that the British shipbuilding and ship-repairing industry was rejuvenated earlier, in 1935, than in the United States, and that British experience cast a mesothelioma shadow over the American future (the American date is unclear in the scanned text)
  • Dr. Selikoff said the United States had not used its period of grace well after British and other European reports
  • Dr. Selikoff said it could not yet be said with complete assurance what proportion of people who worked in shipyards from 1940 to 1975 were at risk from the time of the interview to beyond the year 2000, which trades faced the greatest risks, or what surveillance to offer them
  • Dr. Selikoff asked whether public health authorities should simply record disease and death in people with past exposure, or intervene to minimize the effects of that exposure
  • Dr. Selikoff described data from Japan indicating that atom bomb survivors who later worked with benzene had more leukemia than radiation-exposed people without benzene exposure
  • Dr. Selikoff said industry can identify and trace individuals who worked with materials 25 to 30 years earlier to learn about long-term health effects
  • Dr. Selikoff said OSHA's work in worker education had hardly begun
• The authors' conclusion: Dr. Selikoff said that unless knowledge about hazards is passed on to workers and management, it will largely remain unused and hardly be worth having gained

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Occupational Disease, Notice, OSHA.

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