Inorganic fibres in the lung tissue of Hungarian and German lung cancer patients

Abstract

In comparison with reference values obtained by the same method for German patients with no indication of workplace asbestos exposure, increased concentrations of more than 0.2 million chrysotile fibres/g dry were obtained for six of the 25 Hungarian patients (24%). For one of them, the second highest estimate of a workplace exposure of 60 fibre-years and the highest tissue concentration of 7.38 million chrysotile fibres/g dry substantiate a high probability of a causal relationship to asbestos. A further comparison can be made with the results for 66 German patients treated by surgical lung resection for a disorder other than mesothelioma, mainly lung cancer. For the Hungarian lung cancer patients, similar amounts of chrysotile but distinctly lower amounts of amphibole fibres and distinctly higher amounts of OMFs were observed. A correlation between exposure estimates from occupational history and concentration of fibres in the lung tissue was observed for amphibole (Spearman: R = 0.66, P < 0.001, Pearson: R = 0.50, P = 0.01) and for chrysotile (Pearson: R = 0.48, P = 0.02).

Occupational exposure to asbestos and man-made vitreous fibres and risk of lung cancer: a multicentre case-control study in Europe

“…26 Our study showed similar results where 2.9% of the subjects in Central and Eastern Europe had been exposed to amphibole fibres and chrysotile, 5.2% to only chrysotile and 3.3% to unknown type of asbestos.…”

Role of occupational asbestos exposure in Hungarian lung cancer patients

“…The comparison of the results from occupational history and lung tissue ®bre analysis will be published in detail elsewhere [17]. Its main points may be summarized as follows:…”

“…They were analysed by counting the ferruginous bodies (FB) with optical microscopy and by ®bre analysis with scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) in the Giessen Institute [17]. The method has been published earlier [15,16].…”

“…In this paper, occupational histories and radiological examination of 300 patients suering from malignant respiratory tumours are presented. The latter results may be compared with the results of lung tissue ®bre analysis which were obtained for 25 of these patients [17].…”

Elemental composition of ferruginous bodies and occupational categories: analyses and case studies in Mexico

“…Moulin et al (1988), reporting on an urban population in Belgium, determined an index of 10% of AB with chrysotile cores in exposed workers, but only 3% in the general population. Finally, Rödelsperger et al (2001) found other materials, distinct from asbestos, as constituents of the cores of FB in groups of Germans and Hungarians.…”