Comparison Of Lung Cancer Risks For Dust Workers, Asbestos-Cement Workers And Control Groups

Our plain-English summary of Comparison Of Lung Cancer Risks For Dust Workers, Asbestos-Cement Workers And Control Groups, by M. Haider, M. Neuberger (1980).

The study

• Authors: M. Haider, M. Neuberger
• Published: Biological Effects Of Mineral Fibres (J.C. Wagner, Editor), Lyon: Iarc Scientific Publications, Volume 30, Pp. 973-977 (1980)
• Type of article: Conference paper
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library, J-M no. 000806. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This article reported two cohort studies of lung cancer deaths in Austrian men. In the first, 1630 men with long-term dust exposure (foundry workers, grinders, potters, glass and stone workers and others) were compared with 1630 unexposed controls matched for age and smoking. All lived in Vienna and were registered between 1950 and 1960. Men exposed to asbestos or radioactive dust were excluded. Dust workers had 151 lung cancer deaths against 105 among controls, a relative risk of 1.5 (statistically significant), with no excess before age 60. In the second, preliminary study, 305 asbestos-cement workers and 228 cement workers in a rural district of upper Austria were traced. Their lung cancer deaths numbered 11 and 6. Asbestos-cement workers had an age-standardized relative risk of 1.5 compared with cement workers, but no excess compared with the local and general population. The authors said no definite conclusions could be drawn because numbers were small and follow-up incomplete. They concluded that lung cancer risk factors are better evaluated against proper control groups than against the general population.

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: Prospective cohort study of dust-exposed versus non-exposed workers, plus a historical prospective cohort study comparing asbestos-cement workers with cement workers
• Who was studied: 1630 dust-exposed men and 1630 non-exposed controls, all workmen living in Vienna, born in 1910 or before, registered at preventive medical checkups between 1950 and 1960 and followed to 1976. Only 58 of the 3260 were lost to follow-up because of migration. A second cohort covered asbestos-cement workers (305 traced to the end of 1975) and cement workers (228 traced) in a rural district of upper Austria.
• Exposure: Long-term exposure to dust, including quartz and 'inert' dusts, in foundry work, grinding, pottery, glass work, stone work and other jobs. Men exposed to accepted carcinogenic dusts such as radioactive or asbestos dusts were excluded from this cohort. A separate cohort studied employment in an asbestos-cement plant; the asbestos fiber type is not stated.
• Main results:
  • Vienna cohort: 151 lung cancer deaths among dust workers versus 105 among controls (relative risk 1.5), statistically significant (P < 0.01)
  • General mortality was higher among dust workers than controls, and the difference was due mainly (93%) to chronic respiratory diseases
  • The 151 lung cancer deaths among dust workers compared with 92 expected among Viennese men of the same age (P < 0.0001) and 70 expected among Austrian men
  • Dust workers' lung cancer risk was 1.6 times that of other Viennese men of the same age and 2.1 times that of Austrian men
  • The 105 lung cancer deaths among controls were not statistically different (P > 0.05) from the 99 expected among Viennese men or the 74 expected among Austrian men
  • Among dust workers there were no excess deaths from lung cancer up to the age of 60
  • Rural cohort: of 305 asbestos-cement workers traced to the end of 1975, 177 had died. Among 40 malignancies with a defined primary location, 16 were of the respiratory system and 11 were of the trachea, bronchus and lung.
  • Among cement workers the corresponding figures were 228 traced, 148 deaths, 26 malignancies with defined location, 6 respiratory and 6 trachea, bronchus and lung
  • In preliminary data, lung cancer mortality of asbestos-cement workers appeared to exceed that of cement workers by a factor of 1.5 (age-standardized relative risk)
  • Asbestos-cement workers showed no excess lung cancer risk compared with the local and general population
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that only long exposure times raise lung cancer risk for dust-exposed workers. They also concluded that higher cancer death rates among asbestos workers compared with the general population may be attributable partly to other factors, such as dust exposure in general, urban environmental influences and smoking habits, so the importance of risk factors is better evaluated against proper control groups than against the general population.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The asbestos-cement data were preliminary: numbers were still too small and follow-up was not completed, so no definite conclusions could be drawn

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Lung Cancer, Asbestos-Cement, Relative Risk.

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