Word: fibers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sooner had the history of the South African epidemic been reported in the medical literature than new outbreaks of mesothelioma began to crop up all over the world, wherever asbestos was mined or used in manufacture. It became evident that the onset of exposure to the mineral fiber among those who had died in Johannesburg had coincided with the beginning of asbestos mining operations, the first in the world, in South Africa. As the industry had grown, spreading into different geographical areas, successive generations were becoming increasingly affected. It was clear that the problem was proliferating like a juggernaut. Since...
Exposure is not by any means limited to those who frequent asbestos factories. The combined effects of day-to-day wear and tear on asbestos-containing products, as well as a certain degree of industrial planned obsolescence, insure that varying amounts of the fiber will be continuously liberated into the consumer's air. Floor tiles scuff, ironing boards rip and fray, clutch and brake linings are slowly ground down, asbestos cement dust is kicked into the air when buildings are destroyed by demolition companies. Up to a microgram of asbestos is now found in singlevial doses of injectable drugs. This...
...occurred to several research groups that much of what doctors have in the past decade assumed was general "mutagenic" cancer, cancer of unknown cause, may actually have been asbestos-induced. Recent studies have indicated that smoking may greatly increase the neoplastic effects of asbestos, suggesting that the fibers are absorbing large amounts of benzo(a)pyrene, the primary carcinogenic component of tobacco. Water commissions are beginning to have problems with asbestos contamination of their supplies. The prognosis for future urban communities is disquieting. As long as there are no substitutes to stem the increasing use of asbestos, nothing short...
...industrial fireproofing and insulation are those that make it a deadly irritant once inhaled. A crystalline mineral extracted from a host rock, asbestos is incombustible, and is impervious to bacterial, organic or almost any other type of corrosion or decay. Endowed with the tensile strength of piano wire, the fiber is extremely flexible, spinnable and absorbant. It is so fine--about 2000 times finer than human hair--that once imbedded in the lung tissue, a fiber of asbestos will remain there indefinitely, unless it happened to have settled high enough in the respiratory tract so that it could be removed...
...Irving J. Selikoff of the Mount Sinai School of Environmental Health has suggested that the persistence of the fiber once it comes into contact with lung tissue may result not only in asbestosis but in other sarcomas and cancers besides mesothelioma. Selikoff, the leading authority in this area of asbestos research, subsequently examined mortality figures for 18,000 American and Canadian asbestos workers. He found that the death rate among them from lung cancer was six times that found in the general population. Deaths from gastro-intestinal cancer or cancer of the esophagus were respectively four and six times more...