Medical mineralogy as a new challenge to the geologist: Silicates in human mammary tissue?

The current project illustrates some of the challenges faced by both pathologists and mineralogists who attempt to identify and to understand the occurrence of non-cellular materials in human tissue. Some of those materials are indigenous crystalline solids, or “biominerals.” The latter are biologically precipitated phases that, except for their biological genesis, would be called minerals, e.g., apatite in bone and weddellite in kidney stones. In addition, due to increasing concern about the health effects of inhaled particles (e.g., Guthrie and Mossman 1993; Goldsmith 1994; Hardy and Weill 1995; Beckett 1997; Murphy ABSTRACT