A cross sectional study of 297 white male workers employed in a large beryllium plant was conducted to test the hypothesis that long term exposure to beryllium is associated with decrements in pulmonary function. Spirometric measurement of pulmonary function, chest radiographs, and arterial blood gas measurements were collected. After controlling for age, height, and smoking in multivariate reg...

Chronic beryllium disease (CBD) provides a human disorder in which to study the delayed type IV hypersensitivity response to persistent Ag that leads to noncaseating pulmonary granuloma formation. We hypothesized that, in CBD, failure of IL-10 to modulate the beryllium-specific, cell-mediated immune response would result in persistent, maximal cytokine production and T lymphocyte proliferation,...

The combination of properties of beryllium which results in this very low Z element being a candidate for use in fusion reactors is reviewed. The occurrence, availability, and processing of beryllium from both bertrandite (domestic) and beryl (imported) ores are described. The available beryllium grades are characterized. The purity level of these grades, which are all unalloyed in the usual se...

Epimorphic regeneration proceeds with or without formation of a blastema, as observed for the limb and skin, respectively. Inhibition of epimorphic regeneration provides a means to interrogate the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate it. In this study, we show that exposing amputated limbs to beryllium nitrate disrupts blastema formation and causes severe patterning defects in limb r...

This issue of Environmental Health Perspectives Supplements includes papers presented at the Conference on Berylliumrelated Diseases held November 8-10, 1994, at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Beryllium is the lightest of all solid and chemically stable substances and is used in some form in the aerospace, nuclear, telecommunicat...

A quick, simple and effective chromatographic method for the separation of beryllium from a wide range of elements is described. The elements selected comprise elements which can interfere with the determination of beryllium by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) and elements which commonly occur in environmental and industrial sample matrices. Beryllium is separat...

I n the late 1990s, leaders in a company that manufactures beryllium materials began a process to re-examine the effectiveness of the existing beryllium safety model. This model was based on the primary goals of keeping worker exposure below 2 μg/m3 time-weighted average (TWA) as determined by the daily weightedaverage (DWA) method and prevention of beryllium migration to home and the community...

Pure beryllium (Be) is a hard grey metal, the lightest of all metals, and can be found in mineral rocks, coal, soil, and volcanic dust and natural waters. It is lighter than aluminium yet three times as strong as steel. Beryllium compounds are commercially mined, and refined beryllium is used in a wide range of manufactured products and industries including ceramics, mirrors, special metal allo...