Pulmonary ferruginous bodies in city dwellers: a study of their central fiber

Our plain-English summary of Pulmonary ferruginous bodies in city dwellers: a study of their central fiber, by P. Gross, R. T. P. deTreville, M. N. Haller (1969).

The study

• Authors: P. Gross, R. T. P. deTreville, M. N. Haller
• Published: Archives of Environmental Health, Vol. 19, August 1969, pp. 186-188
• Type of article: Journal article
• 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 1969 laboratory study from Pittsburgh examined the central fiber, or core, of ferruginous bodies (iron-coated fibers often called "asbestos bodies") in the lungs of city dwellers who had not been exposed to asbestos at work. The authors reasoned that chrysotile makes up more than 90% of asbestos used in the United States, so some cores should be chrysotile if the bodies came from asbestos in city air. Ferruginous bodies from the lungs of 28 people were examined by electron microscopy and electron diffraction and compared with standard samples of chrysotile, amosite and crocidolite. None of the 28 cores showed the hollow, tubular structure typical of chrysotile, and none could be identified as any of those three asbestos types. By contrast, cores of ferruginous bodies from hamsters given brake drum dust directly into the windpipe gave patterns characteristic of chrysotile. The human cores were crystalline, which the authors said ruled out fibrous glass and similar materials. The authors concluded that they had excluded chrysotile but had not identified the fibers, which would need further study.

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: Laboratory study using electron microscopy and electron diffraction to identify the core fibers of ferruginous bodies from human lungs, with a comparison against ferruginous bodies from hamsters given brake drum dust
• Who was studied: 28 ferruginous bodies isolated from the lungs of 28 people in Pittsburgh who were urban dwellers not occupationally exposed to asbestos. For comparison, ferruginous bodies were taken from hamsters killed 12 months after an intratracheal injection of brake drum dust; the number of hamsters is not given.
• Exposure: No occupational asbestos exposure in the human subjects. The cores were tested for chrysotile, amosite and crocidolite, using standard samples of these fibers for comparison. The authors' premise was that chrysotile makes up more than 90% of asbestos used in the United States. The hamsters received an intratracheal injection of 26 mg of brake drum dust (iron free).
• Main results:
  • None of the cores of the 28 ferruginous bodies from human lungs showed the hollow, tubular structure characteristic of chrysotile.
  • Based on diffraction measurements, none of the human core fibers could be identified as chrysotile, amosite or crocidolite.
  • The central filaments of ferruginous bodies from hamsters injected with brake drum dust gave electron diffraction patterns characteristic of chrysotile.
  • The human core fibers gave a crystalline diffraction pattern. The authors said this ruled out fibrous glass, glass wool and other glassy materials in this sample.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that they had not identified the fibers at the centre of the ferruginous bodies in these people, but had excluded chrysotile. They called this exclusion highly significant: if asbestos in urban air caused these bodies, they argued, chrysotile should have been found in some cores.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The authors state that identification of the core fibers must await further electron diffraction information and possibly electron microprobe measurements.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Ferruginous body, Asbestos Bodies, Chrysotile, Amosite, Crocidolite, Crystalline.

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