An 81-year-old woman was dying from histologically confirmed pulmonary fibrosis without having had any asbestos exposure in the workplace. The lung dust fibre analysis showed significantly increased "asbestos bodies" (AB) (2,640 AB per gram of wet lung tissue) and asbestos fibre concentrations (8,600,000 amphibole fibres of all lengths and 540,000 amphibole fibres with a length ≥5 μm per gram o...

OBJECTIVE Asbestos is an established human carcinogen and has been identified at 16 of 26 Jamaican hospitals surveyed. We sought to determine if hospital employees are exposed and if current asbestos exposure in Jamaican hospitals differed by job category. METHOD At two of the largest hospitals with more than 10 permanent maintenance workers and where over 67% of bulk samples analysed contain...

Asbestos fibers are an important cause of lung fibrosis; however, the biological mechanisms are incompletely understood. The lung epithelium serves an important barrier function in the lung, and disrupting the epithelial barrier can contribute to lung fibrosis. Lung epithelial permeability is increased in patients with asbestosis, and asbestos fibers increase permeability across cultured human ...

Mesothelial cells, the progenitor cell of the asbestos-induced tumor mesothelioma, are particularly sensitive to the toxic effects of asbestos, although the molecular mechanisms by which asbestos induces injury in mesothelial cells are not known. We asked whether asbestos induced apoptosis in mesothelial cells and whether reactive oxygen species were important. Pleural mesothelial cells (rabbit...

BACKGROUND Retroperitoneal fibrosis (RPF) is a rare fibroinflammatory disease that leads to hydronephrosis and renal failure. In a case-control study, we have recently shown that asbestos exposure was the most important risk factor for RPF in the Finnish population. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relation of asbestos exposure to radiologically confirmed lung and pleural fibrosis amon...

OBJECTIVES To examine if the risk of lung cancer declines with increasing time since ceasing exposure to asbestos and quitting smoking, and to determine the relative asbestos effect between non-smokers and current smokers. METHODS A cohort study of 2935 former workers of the crocidolite mine and mill at Wittenoom, who responded to a questionnaire on smoking first issued in 1979 and on whom qu...

Asbestos-related health risks have been evaluated on the basis of past experience, when occupational exposures were much higher; while the linear no-threshold (LNT) approach has usually been applied. However, applicability of the LNT dose-response pattern to low levels of asbestos exposure has never been proven. Asbestos-related research has been influenced by vested interests and biases. Furth...

Recently, the Joint Policy Committee (JPC) of the Societies of Epidemiology (SE), a consortium of national and international epide‑ miologic societies and organizations, released a statement calling for the global ban of asbestos use (JPC‑SE 2012). This is not the first such call for an international ban (Collegium Ramazzini 2010), but it is a signi‑ fi cant one because it is endorsed by 10 mem...

Lung asbestos burden was compared with exposure indices derived from job history interviews in 42 male subjects originating from the Montréal Case-Control Study project, 12 of whom had documented asbestos exposed job histories. Job interview data consisting of a chronological timetable of job histories were translated into detailed exposure indices by an expert group of hygienists and chemists....

The objectives of this study was to review many epidemiological risk factors on the occurrence of malignant pleural mesothelioma among occupational and nonoccupational asbestos-exposed men and women mentioned in several previous studies. Asbestos exposure is a well-documented etiological factor of malignant pleural mesothelioma. The majority of cases are men and only 40% of female cases are occ...