Occupational Health In The Insulating Trade

Our plain-English summary of Occupational Health In The Insulating Trade, by I.R. Tabershaw, W.C. Cooper, J.L. Balzer (1969).

The study

• Authors: I.R. Tabershaw, W.C. Cooper, J.L. Balzer
• Published: Proceedings Of The 16Th International Congress On Occupational Health, Tokyo, September 22-27 (1969)
• Type of article: Conference paper
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library, J-M no. 004301. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This conference paper described an occupational health program for insulation workers in the western United States. It did not report a new study. The authors explained that changing work sites, schedules and employers made usual occupational health services hard to run in construction. They cited earlier studies, including their own earlier finding that San Francisco-area insulating workers with over 20 years in the trade had approximately eight times as many lung cancer deaths as expected. The program covered about 2,200 insulating workers in 11 local unions across 13 western states. In 1966, a contractors' association and the union's western conference set up a fund paid for by a 2 cents an hour contribution from labor and management. The program had three parts: medical surveillance by approved local physicians or clinics using uniform records, industrial hygiene, and education. A mobile industrial hygiene laboratory was being planned. The authors stated that conventional occupational health had not proved workable in this setting. They also stated that recommended exposure levels should be revised downward, and they noted that past exposures could not be accurately defined.

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: Descriptive report of a joint labor-management occupational health program (conference paper; no new research data)
• Who was studied: About 2,200 insulating workers belonging to 11 local unions in the 13 states of the Western States Conference of the insulators' union, United States, late 1960s
• Exposure: Asbestos minerals, described as the main hazard (no fiber types named). The authors also mentioned possible exposure to dust from other insulating materials, solvents and noise.
• Main results:
  • Background cited from the authors' earlier study (reference 5), not new data in this paper: insulating workers in the San Francisco area with over 20 years in the trade had approximately eight times as many lung cancer deaths as expected
  • In 1966 the contractors' association and the union's western conference set up an occupational health fund financed by a 2 cents an hour contribution from labor and management
  • At first about half the members of the Conference took part in the fund; it later covered the whole area
  • The program had three areas: medical surveillance, industrial hygiene and education
  • Medical surveillance consisted of periodic physical examinations by local physicians or clinics approved by the medical advisor
  • A mobile industrial hygiene laboratory was being planned to visit work sites
  • The authors stated that conventional occupational health had not proved workable in the construction insulating trade
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that conventional occupational health had not proved workable in the construction insulating trade, and that recommended exposure levels should be revised downward, apply to fibrous asbestos rather than total dust, and aim to prevent brief heavy exposures as well as average exposures
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The authors stated that past exposures could not be accurately defined
  • The authors stated that no quantitative studies of hazards other than asbestos had been reported

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Insulator, Lung Cancer, Industrial Hygiene.

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