Can one fibre cause cancer?

Our plain-English summary of Can one fibre cause cancer?, by G.R. Kelman (The Medical Journal of Australia, 1985).

The study

• Author: G.R. Kelman
• Journal: The Medical Journal of Australia
• Published: 1985;143(2):92
• Type of article: Letter
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 001253).

In plain English

This was a short letter to the editor, not a study, and it reported no new data. The author argued that asbestos hygiene standards assume there is no safe threshold for cancer, an idea the author said led to "misguided demands" for banning asbestos and removing it from public buildings. The author then made a theoretical calculation of the lung cancer risk from breathing in a single fibre. The starting point was an estimate published by Peto, not by this author: lung cancer incidence doubles (relative risk 2) with chrysotile exposure of 200 fibres/cm³/yr, described as 50 years of work at 4 fibres/cm³. The author assumed that a worker breathes 10 litres of air a minute at work and that risk rises in a straight line with dose. On that basis the author estimated that such a worker inhales roughly 5 × 10^13 fibres, giving a relative risk from one fibre of about 1.00000000000004. The author concluded that if exposure is small so is the risk, and that outcries against asbestos divert resources from other preventive activities.

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: Letter to the editor presenting a theoretical calculation; no new data collected
• Who was studied: No study population; a hypothetical worker with 50 years of occupational exposure
• Exposure: Chrysotile asbestos; 200 fibres/cm³/yr cumulative exposure (50 years at 4 fibres/cm³), taken from Peto's estimate of the exposure that doubles lung cancer incidence
• Main results:
  • Assuming a respiratory minute volume at work of 10 L/min, the author estimated the air breathed at work over a 50-year working life and the number of fibres it would contain at 4 fibres/cm³, roughly 5 × 10^13 fibres
  • Assuming a linear dose-response relationship, the author calculated the relative risk of lung cancer from inhaling a single fibre as around 2/5 × 10^13, that is, 1.00000000000004
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that if exposure is small so is the risk, and that outcries against asbestos divert resources from other preventive activities. The author also called the demands for banning asbestos and removing it from public buildings misguided.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Lung cancer.

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Browse more research in The Medical Journal of Australia, or return to medical research.