Beryllium is a lightweight metal with unique qualities related to stiffness, corrosion resistance, and conductivity. While there are many useful applications, researchers in the 1930s and 1940s linked beryllium exposure to a progressive occupational lung disease. Acute beryllium disease is a pulmonary irritant response to high exposure levels, whereas chronic beryllium disease (CBD) typically r...

Beryllium metal was classified in Europe collectively with beryllium compounds, e.g. soluble salts. Toxicological equivalence was assumed despite greatly differing physicochemical properties. Following introduction of the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation, beryllium metal was classified as individual substance and more investigational effort...

I read with great interest the research articles by Strupp (2011a,b) ‘Beryllium Metal I’ and ‘Beryllium Metal II’ which were funded by the REACH Beryllium Consortium (2008), an industry group led by Brush Wellman Inc., the largest producer of beryllium in North America. I would like to comment on the author’s conclusion that beryllium metal is not a skin sensitizer and to caution readers on the...

Inhalation of Beryllium (Be) dust, or its vapors or compounds, or subcutaneous implantation of Beryllium can lead to either acute or chronic beryllium disease, also known as berylliosis. It can affect genetically susceptible individuals or workers exposed to the fumes or vapors of the metal. It was first described by Hardy and Tabershaw in 1946. Beryllium can cause either an immediate acute for...

Inhalation of Beryllium (Be) dust, or its vapors or compounds, or subcutaneous implantation of Beryllium can lead to either acute or chronic beryllium disease, also known as berylliosis. It can affect genetically susceptible individuals or workers exposed to the fumes or vapors of the metal. It was first described by Hardy and Tabershaw in 1946. Beryllium can cause either an immediate acute for...

Granulomatous lesions of the skin produced by beryllium compounds were first described by Grier, Nash, and Freiman (1948), but no case occurring in this country has yet been published. As interest in the effects of exposure to beryllium has grown with the increased use of this metal during the last decade, a case of multiple beryllium granulomatosis of the skin occurring in a girl of 20 years i...

Beryllium is the fourth element in the periodic table and the second lightest metal known. Discovered as an oxide in 1798 by the French chemist L. N. Vauquelin, beryllium was first isolated in 1828, when it was called "glucinium" owing to the sweet taste of its salts. Beryllium is the lightest of all solid, chemically stable substances and has an unusually high melting point (12870C). Silver gr...

The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) complex is a series of genes located on chromosome 6 that are important in normal immune function. Susceptibility to chronic beryllium disease, a granulomatous lung disease that appears in workers exposed to beryllium, is modified by genetic variants of the HLA-DP subregion. Evaluation of HLA-DPB1 sequence motifs in current and former beryllium workers implicat...

Within recent years a number of reports have appeared demonstrating the toxicity of beryllium in humans and animals. Relatively little is known, however, about the mode of action of beryllium in the body. Klemperer, Miller, and Hill (l), as well as Crier, Hood, and Hoagland (2), have demonstrated an inhibitory action of beryllium on alkaline phosphatase and have suggested the possibility that t...

BACKGROUND The nuclear weapons industry has long been known as a source of beryllium exposure. METHODS A total of 1,004 former workers from a nuclear weapons assembly site in the Midwest were screened for sensitization to beryllium (BeS). The screenings were part of the Department of Energy (DOE) Former Worker Program established in 1996. RESULTS Twenty-three (2.3%) workers were found sensi...