Occupationally induced lung cancer and mesothelioma have long been attributed to asbestos and moreover, several epidemiological studies have indicated a co-carcinogenic effect of cigarette smoking on the incidence of lung cancer in asbestos workers. The aim of the present study was to investigate the co-carcinogenic effects of asbestos and other carcinogens with emphasis placed on determining t...

Quebec’s asbestos mines have operated for 130 years and made Quebec a world leader in export of asbestos over the past century. Even though the scientific evidence was overwhelming that use of asbestos was causing epidemics of asbestos-related diseases and death, the Quebec and Canadian governments continued to give the asbestos industry unquestioning financial and political backing. This legit...

Asbestos-related diseases continue to result in approximately 120,000 deaths every year in the United States and worldwide. Although extensive research has been conducted on health effects of occupational exposures to asbestos, many issues related to environmental asbestos exposures remain unresolved. For example, environmental asbestos exposures associated with a former mine in Libby, Montana,...

This article describes the history of the asbestos use regulation process in Taiwan and the associated factors leading to its total ban in 2018. Despite the long history of asbestos mining and manufacturing since the Japanese colonial period, attempts to understand the impact of asbestos on the health of the population and to control its use did not emerge until the early 1980s. We attempted to...

Both airborne asbestos and non-asbestos fiber concentrations were evaluated in Korean non-occupational environments. The airborne fiber concentrations were analyzed in 96 air samples, from 48 different points, by transmission electron microscopy, with energy-dispersive X-ray analysis. The geometric means of the airborne asbestos and non-asbestos fiber concentrations were 0.62 and 67.86, and 0.3...

OBJECTIVES Workers in the asbestos industry tend to have high smoking rates compared to the general population. Both asbestos exposure and cigarette smoking are recognized risk factors for lung cancer mortality, but the exact nature of the interaction between the two remains uncertain. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of smoking and smoking cessation among asbestos workers in Gre...

The adverse pulmonary effects of asbestos are well accepted in scientific circles. However, the extrapulmonary consequences of asbestos exposure are not as clearly defined. In this review the potential for asbestos to produce diseases of the peritoneum, immune, gastrointestinal (GIT), and reproductive systems are explored as evidenced in published, peer-reviewed literature. Several hundred epid...

The uncoated and coated fibre load in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid was assessed using light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and x ray microanalysis in 15 subjects with previous, unprotected exposure to asbestos, including three with clinical and radiological evidence of asbestosis, and in 13 urban dwelling control subjects with no known occupational exposure to asbestos. The mea...

detection of trace metals in the cell-free BAL fluid, showing high concentrations of tungsten (W), tantalum (Ta) and cobalt (Co) in hard metal lung disease [163]. The quantification of asbestos bodies is best done by filtration of 5-15 ml fresh BAL fluid, cells included, onto millipore filters, and counting the number of asbestos bodies [179]. Uncoated asbestos fibres can only be counted by ele...

Experimental animal studies comparing asbestos and non-asbestos varieties of tremolite indicate tremolite asbestos is markedly more carcinogenic. By direct analogy, the differences in carcinogenicity between tremolite asbestos and non-asbestos prismatic tremolite should be the same for the other types of amphibole that also crystallize in the asbestos and non-asbestos habits. The earliest of th...