Biological Effects of Mineral Fibres Volume 1 - Contents, Foreword, Participants, Opening Remarks, and Publications

Our plain-English summary of Biological Effects of Mineral Fibres Volume 1 - Contents, Foreword, Participants, Opening Remarks, and Publications (1980).

The study

• Published: BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF MINERAL FIBRES (J.C. WAGNER, EDITOR), LYON: IARC SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS, VOLUME 30 (1980)
• 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 document is the front matter of Volume 1 of the proceedings of a symposium on the biological effects of mineral fibres. IARC, INSERM and the MRC Pneumoconiosis Unit, Penarth, organized the symposium, and it was held at IARC in Lyon, France, on 25-27 September 1979. J.C. Wagner was editor-in-chief. The document reports no original research. It contains the table of contents for both parts of the proceedings, a foreword, an editorial introduction, a list of participants, opening remarks in French and English, and a list of IARC publications. The introduction said the fibres considered fell into four broad groups, and that relatively few papers dealt with fibres other than asbestos. In the opening remarks, a French Ministry of Health official said dose-response relationships had been established for asbestos industry workers exposed at high doses. The official also said it was still not possible to set a threshold dose for low-dose exposure. The remarks noted that a French advisory council had proposed, in 1978, a reference value of 50 nanograms per cubic metre for work in places treated with sprayed asbestos. They also said no long-term data were available on substitute fibres.

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: Front matter of symposium proceedings (contents, foreword, introduction, participant list, opening remarks, publications list); not a research study
• Who was studied: No study population. The symposium was held at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France, 25-27 September 1979, and the document lists its participants from many countries
• Exposure: Topics of the proceedings: commercially utilized forms of asbestos, other asbestiform fibres, other naturally occurring fibrous minerals, and man-made mineral fibres
• Main results:
  • The editorial introduction stated that, although the volume covers the whole field of mineral fibres, relatively few papers deal explicitly with fibres other than asbestos
  • In the opening remarks, the French Ministry of Health representative said dose-response relationships had been established for asbestos industry workers at high doses, but that for low-dose exposure it was still not possible to set a threshold dose below which no harmful effects would be seen
  • The opening remarks stated that the Conseil Supérieur d'Hygiène Publique de France proposed in 1978 a reference concentration of 50 nanograms per cubic metre for work in premises treated with sprayed asbestos, and asked whether this provisional value was adequate
  • The opening remarks stated that no data on long-term biological consequences were available for substitute materials such as glass fibres and mineral fibres

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: IARC, Pneumoconiosis, Dose-response relationship.

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