Mineral Fibre Problems: A Management View

Our plain-English summary of Mineral Fibre Problems: A Management View, by H.D.S. Hardie (1980).

The study

• Author: H.D.S. Hardie
• Published: BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF MINERAL FIBRES (J.C. WAGNER, EDITOR), LYON: IARC SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS, VOLUME 30, PP. 769-774 (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 paper was not a research study. It was an opinion piece by the Director of Personnel and External Relations of Turner & Newall Ltd, a Manchester company associated with asbestos and man-made mineral fibres, giving an industry management view. It reported no new data. The author argued that most fibres have some association with documented or potential health problems, and that management is responsible for the safety of processes and products, but that the data for judging risk are often inadequate. The author wrote that the limits of dust measurement technology make apparently precise exposure figures little more reliable than words like 'heavy', 'moderate' or 'light'. The author held that controlling a useful but hazardous material is preferable to banning it. The author noted that man-made mineral fibres were being used in place of asbestos in products with no health history, and listed six minimum record-keeping requirements. The author argued that occupational health is one element in a wider balance of risks, citing brake failures, and concluded that consultation rather than confrontation was more likely to produce widely acceptable solutions.

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: Opinion or commentary paper presenting an industry management view; no original research data
• Who was studied: No people were studied. The paper discusses the asbestos and man-made mineral fibre industries from the viewpoint of management at Turner & Newall Ltd, Manchester, UK
• Exposure: Asbestos and man-made mineral fibres in general, including their use as substitutes for asbestos in products such as boards and sprayed insulation
• Main results:
  • The author argued that the data on which to base risk evaluations for fibres are often inadequate
  • The author held that controlling a useful but hazardous material is preferable to prohibiting it
  • The author stated that there was a growing feeling that different parts of the asbestos industry produced different patterns of disease, but that data of sufficient quality did not exist to prove or disprove this
  • The author listed six minimum information requirements for management, beginning with detailed employment records over a long period and including characterization of dust by fibre length and diameter
  • The author argued that occupational health is only one element in a wider balance of risks, citing road accidents caused by brake failures
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that, in areas of technical uncertainty, consultation rather than confrontation seems more likely to produce solutions acceptable to the widest part of society

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Turner & Newall.

Browse return to medical research.