Document 8VJGjnR1dOxRVpkLgkbJY04jo

PLAINTIFF'S EXHIBIT DOW-1535 MORTALITY EXPERIENCE OF RESIDENTS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF AN ASBESTOS FACTORY E. Cuyler Hammond and Lawrence Garfinkel American Cancer Society New York. New York 10017 Irving J. Selikoff and William J. Nicholson Environmental Sciences Laboratory Mount Sinai School of Medicine The City University of New York New York. New York 10029 Conditions during 1949-54 in an amosite asbestos factory located in Paterson, Now Jersey and the subsequent mortality experience of the workers were described curlier in this monograph. This paper reports on the mortality experience of men who wed in the vicinity of that factory. The study was undertaken for the following i easons. During the years in which the factory was in operation, many of the workers were seen as private patients by one of us (I.J.S.) who had a special interest in tuberculosis md other lung diseases. Since their lung complaints seemed to be associated with their employment, he obtained information on their working environment. While no dust , aunts were made at that time, it was apparent by simple inspection that the men were heavily exposed to asbestos dust. Several attempts were made to relieve the situation !.y means of exhaust equipment. How effective this equipment was within the plant is pen to question; the exhausts, however, removed the dust into the outside air. In jddition. during hot weather, the windows were left open, allowing asbestos dust to blow around the neighborhood. To our knowledge, no dust count was made at that tunc Therefore, we have no quantitative data on the degree to which the air in the neighborhood was actually contaminated. Many years later, we collected samples of settled dust from the attics of houses in the neighborhood. Samples collected from houses near the factory still contained appreciable numbers of amosite asbestos fibers; those collected from houses located at a greater distance from the factory contained fewer libers. Trom this sketchy information, it is safe to assume that people living in the neighborhood of the factory were exposed to asbestos dust, obviously an extremely light exposure as compared with the exposure of men working in the factory. We became concerned about this exposure at a much later djte after the mortality experience of the factory workers became known. The question thus arises as to whether very light nonoccupational exposure to amosite asbestos dust produces adverse effects to a measurable degree (An extremely small eirect would not be measurable by any means at hand. If there were absolutely zero effect, this fact could not be established.) MATr.KlAt.S AND MfcTHODS The factory was located in a district known as Riverside, which was largely residential during the period when the factory was in operation. The prevailing winds 417 0077 SV2J/79/OJJO-041 7 SI 7S/QC 1979. NVAS ST0279237 I .1-1- oo r\5,biri -op ~'con OOrcn-. ,r" 5 &2i Hammond et al.: Asbestos Mortality 419 ,v.-e ccncraliv such as to blow dust from the factory in the direction of most of the i sellings. From a map of the city as it was in 1942-3. we ascertained the address of ;i v Riverside dwelling located within one half mile of the factory. Hereafter, we will '.r :o the area as the ''target" area or simply as Riverside (Figure I). or comparison, we selected another Paterson neighborhood known as Totowa. vokh is located several miles from Riverside. In the 1940s and 1950s. the twodistricts i r. very similar with respect to socioeconomic status, race, national origin of the .bitants, and ty pes of dwellings. I ortunately. an excellent city directory of Paterson is published annually. It lists .ante all adults (age I g or older) living at each address and states the occupation of .' c l ead of the household. Sex is not stated. '.'ur general plan was to trace, over a 35-year period or longer, residents of these neighborhoods. We thought that tracing could be accomplished for males but : 'i.ibls not for females because of changes of name by marriage or divorce. . ' relore, we confined our study to males. its directories were available for each of the years 1942-54. the time-span during " ch the plant was in operation. A card was made for each apparently male resident r Roersidc ("target area") and Totowa who was listed in at least two directories in -3. 1943. and 1944 and also listed in at least one of the directories in 1945-54 In . >e of doubt as to sex. the person was tentatively included as a subject. Later, in .racing the subjects, some were found to be female. These subjects were then .1 mtnated from further consideration. We also eliminated from the study any ; dents in either area w ho worked in the asbestos plant. Tracing Tracing of the subjects was started in 1968, those traced initially were retraced a radically thereafter. As a first step, we searched for each subject in the then most recent issues of the Paterson city directory If found, we made contact with the subject t-.r a member of his family) by telephone, mail, or home visit and verified sex, date of birth, and determined whether the subject was still living. If the subject had died, a cupv of the death certificate was obtained. This certificate yielded initial data on a considerable proportion of the subjects. We will call these subjects "easy" cases, the remainder are "difficult" cases. A ltd was made of the difficult cases, and, thanks to the New Jersey Department of Health, every name of this list was checked against the list of all deaths that m-curred in New Jersey during the indicated interval of time. At the end of this process, there still remained many subjects whose status was unknown. How were these subjects traced? Credit is due to our remarkable team of field workers. It would take many pages to describe all of the methods they used. After completion of their initial tracing, the subjects were retraced periodically. This is a continuing process The last tracing was completed in 1977. For analysis of the data, it is necessary to select a cutolT dale through which time a very large proportion of the subjects were successfully traced. The cutolf date for this report is December 31.1976 Tsull 1 shows the results of tracing through that date. The original list contained 7653 names 2447 residents of Riverside (target area) and 5206 residents of Totowa. By checking, we found that 16 of the men had worked in the amosite asbestos factory (Ln.trco), so they were excluded. Another 100 men were excluded for the following reasons: female instead of male, accidental duplication of names, and membership in insulation worker's union To this day. we have never been able to trace 109 subjects 1 ST0279239 420 Annals New York Academy of Sciences Table I Tr k'inu of Si meets is nil Pert uses \Ei<7HBOitooo Srtos Total, original list of names Deleted from sludy Unarco workers Females, duplicates, etc. Never traced Died before January I. 1962. death certificate received Reported dead before January 1. 1962, no death certificate Net alive Januarv 1, 1962 Traced alive December 31, 1976 Less traced alive, no dale of birth Net traced alive Traced dead January 1962 to December 1976 Less traced dead, no death certificate Net traced dead Not traced Tout included in analysts Toi.il 7653 16 100 109 1723 20 5685 3046 I1 3035 2550 35 251 5 89 5550 Ri%ersidc 244 7 4 27 41 537 10 1828 1003 4 999 801 21 780 24 1779 Totowa 5206 i: 73 68 1186 10 3857 2043 7 2036 1749 14 1735 65 3771 {4 1 from Riverside and 68 from Totowa), so they must be excluded After these inclusions, ihc nel total was 7428 subjects. Among employees oC the asbestos plant, there was vers little evidence of increased mortality until about 20 years after onset of exposure. Therefore, we decided to tontine ihe present study to the period starting on January 1. 1962 (roughly 20 sears after the opening of the factory). T\bi f 4 \<.r Disthibi iios oi Sennets |s.u t i>fo is Vsslssisis Pstkrsos Nek.iiborhood Sriuv Agc 7o January 1, 1962. Ext 11 nt\c Tnt>bC Nor Tr veto. IN \Reo Worm rs\ wn OruMs V car of Birth l ^'2 -1926 1917-1921 191 2 -I9IIS 1907 -191! 1902 1906 M97- 190f 1392-1X96 m7-|891 1M2-IXX& 1 >77-18K| l\72-l76 J7J T.iijl Mean age Age m 1962 35-39 40-44 45-49 50- 54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80-84 S5-K9 90 t Torn! Number Percent 201 589 803 817 784 674 654 4X9 294 159 69 17 5550 36 106 14 4 14 7 14 I 12.1 11 8 X8 5 .1 2.9 1.3 04 100 0 Rivcr>ide Number Percent 76 184 279 264 231 21 1 :ok 169 90 44 19 4 1 779 43 10 3 15 7 14 8 13 0 1 1.8 1 1.7 95 5.1 2.5 l.l 0.2 1000 58 0 Tutowa Number Percent 125 405 524 553 553 463 446 320 204 115 50 13 3771 3.3 10.7 13 9 14 7 !4 7 12 3 11 X 8.5 54 3I 1.3 0.3 100.0 58.5 Number r AH cause' Numbe Percent All cancel Numbe Percent Lung can> Numbe Pereem 5685 wer following -at< cn y --H o >0 HI KO rii PO id. XT o Nim ro* 86 'J6 i hose ceased Jed lo 1 years Hammond ft alAsbestos Mortality 421 T\8I.E 3 Si uiiik (II Dl STIIS \SI) PlKtrNT Dl \f> OF SLBItCTS M START Or PERIOD, RIVERSIDE \si> Totowa. Paterson Neighborhood Study (, .tusc of Death Ml C.llUCN Number Percent Ml cancer Number Percent 1 jitii cancer Number Percent Number of subject* it start of period 1962-6 1967 -71 1972-6 Total 1962-76 RivcrM Riversi Riversi Riversi dc Totowa dc Totowa dc Totowa de Totowa 279 611 259 609 242 515 780 1735 15 7 16.2 17.3 19.3 19 5 20.2 43.8 46 0 62 119 52 134 49 100 163 353 3 5 3 2 3.5 4.2 3.9 39 9.2 9.4 16 28 13 44 12 26 1 1 98 09 0 7 09 1.4 1.0 1.0 2.3 2 6 1 779 3771 1500 3160 1241 2551 1779 3771 Of i he 7428 subjects menuoned above, 1743 had died before January 1, 1962. and 5685 were alive as of lhal dale. Of ihcse 5685. 135 were excluded from analysis for ihe following reasons' I I living but age unknown. 35 reported to have died but death certificate not obtained, and 89 lost to follow-up. The analysis that follows is based on the final net total: 5550 men alive as of Januarv 1, 1962, of whom 2515 were dead and 3035 were alive as of December 3 I, 1976, Findings Taiii l. 2 shows the dates of birth and ages of the 5550 subjects as of January 1, 1962. The distributions are not identical for Riverside and Totowa, but they are very close indeed This fact greatly simplified the presentation of findings. Taiii I 4 Ni vim k (mi Pi kc i st hi Dishiniok Cancik Sms. UiviRsim imi Totow v. Pati rson Ni kuirohiiood Sit.m Riverside Totow a 1 ung Colon-rectum PrikM.iic l.eukemu biom.K'h P.tncrcMs Kidncv Uladder lymphoma FisophJgu* Other specified Unspccihcd Number 41 24 17 11 ,9 9 5 5 5 4 23 10 Percent 2.3! 1.35 0 9h 0 (.2 0.51 0.51 0 28 n 2x 0 2K 0.22 1.29 0.56 Number 98 74 37 15 22 13 7 14 9 12 41 11 Percent 2.59 1 96 0 98 0 59 0 <8 0 34 0 19 0 37 0 24 0.32 1.09 0 29 ST027924I :: Annals New York Academy of Sciences Ordinarily, in comparing the mortality experience of two groups of subjects, it is necessary to lake account of differences in age by some procedure, such as age standardization. We carried out the procedure and found that age-standardization had virtually no effect on the findings due to the closeness of the age distributions of the Riverside and Totowa subjects. For this reason, we will present the findings in terms of the actual number of deaths and the percentage of deaths of men alive at the start of the period for each of the two areas. Mortality Altogether, 780 (43.8*?) of the Riverside subjects and 1735 (46.0%) of the Totowa subjects died during the 15-year period January I, 1962 to December 31. 1976. During this period, cancer (all sites) accounted for the deaths of 163 (9.2%) of the Riverside subjects and for 353 (9.4%) of the deaths of the Totowa subjects; lung cancer accounted for 41 (2.3%) of deaths of Riverside and 98 (2.6%) deaths of Totowa subject. Thus, with respect to total deaths, deaths from cancer (all sites combined), and lung cancer, mortality experience was slightly worse in Totowa than in Riverside. Taulc 3 shows the corresponding figures for each of three 5-year time periods. In all three periods, total mortality was slightly higher in Totowa than in Riverside. In the first period, cancer mortality (all sites) and lung cancer were higher in Riverside than in Totowa; in the second and third periods, the reverse occurred. Table 4 shows mortality experience for the entire 15 years. Both lung cancer and colon-rectal cancer mortalities were a little worse in Totowa than in Riverside. The number of deaths from cancer of each of various other sites was so small that the differences in mortality (Riverside versus Totowa) are of no interest because of statistical instability. No deaths from peritoneal mesothelioma and just one death from pleural mesothelioma occurred during the 15-year period. This one death was thJt of a Riverside subject (an electrician) whodied of pleural mesothelioma in 1966. This is the only finding that gives even a hint that the slight asbestos exposure of Riverside subjects might have resulted in a fatality. What detracts from such a conclusion is the fact that the one mesothelioma occurred in the first of the three 5-ycar lime periods raiher than in the last of the three lime periods. Based on evidence from studies of people with occupational exposure to asbestos dust, we would have expected that the mesothelioma dcjth would have occurred in the last raiher than the first 5-ycar lime period, but this is only speculation ENV The geolo asbestos mine initially confi considerably country was t of Haceltepc Eskisehir and plaques and f villages of M mental expo conducted by Our rece primarily ca malienant p wi e I ro Tl KO of an ro villages wh< for plastcrii In Mih. There arc > //go---C Anatolia. / asbestos mi peasants oi villages vet zero CPP i t'regh- villagcs ha Asbestos li have foum Souihi