Environmental Data in Industry

Our plain-English summary of Environmental Data in Industry, by S. Holmes (1973).

The study

• Author: S. Holmes
• Published: BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF ASBESTOS (J.C. WAGNER, EDITOR), LYON: IARC SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS, VOLUME 8, PP. 135-137 (1973)
• 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 short paper was a commentary on asbestos workplace hygiene standards and presented no original research. It cited a study by Smither of ten asbestosis cases with minimum disability, in which all but two showed X-ray changes first. The author, of the Asbestosis Research Council, discussed the 1968 British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) chrysotile standard, set to limit to 1% the risk of first signs of asbestosis. Its data, the author wrote, came from men with a minimum exposure period (years unreadable in the scan) in one textile mill in June 1966, excluded men who met that minimum but had left, and were scanty. The author called for a prospective study and recommended personal exposure sampling, studying workplaces using only one asbestos type, a limit on total exposure over time using membrane filter fibre counts, and avoiding peaks above five times the threshold limit value over 10 minutes. The author wrote that the standard would also control asbestos-induced lung cancer, accepting the principle that, absent any other agency, lung cancer occurs only with asbestosis. The position for pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma was called uncertain.

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: Commentary on occupational hygiene standards for asbestos (conference paper); no original study data
• Who was studied: No population was studied. The paper discusses the data behind the 1968 BOHS chrysotile standard. Those data came from a group of men with a minimum length of exposure in one asbestos textile mill in June 1966; the number of years is damaged in the scan. Men who had worked the minimum period but had left the industry before that date were not counted.
• Exposure: Chrysotile, and other asbestos types in general. The paper discusses the BOHS chrysotile standard and the threshold limit value of 2 fibres/ml calculated from it, assuming 50 years of occupational exposure.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the original data were scanty and that a properly designed prospective study is needed. The author recommended that revised standards remain limits on total integrated exposure, based on membrane filter fibre counts. The author also recommended that exposure to peaks higher than five times the TLV, measured over 10 minutes, be avoided.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author states that the recommended standard is designed to control asbestosis. The author holds that it would also control asbestos-induced lung cancer, by accepting the principle that, in the absence of any other agency, lung cancer occurs only with asbestosis. The author states that the position for pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma is uncertain.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Chrysotile, Threshold Limit Value (TLV), Lung Cancer, Peritoneal Mesothelioma.

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