Document 93D3OnYeB6N3YmVBewRzdrMyV
i i
10.
whose death certificate it was not mentioned, may have been missed.
The import of tbis 167* is enhanced by the simultaneous statement
that the incidence of lung cancer in autopsies of the general popu
lation is only 1%. The danger of attempting to compare a rate found
I.
in 344 caeee with the rate for the general population without respect
to age, occupation, and many other variables, such as smoking habits,
is obvious, Lynch/142* who with Smith
had reported the first
case in 1935, reported four cases of carcinoma of the lung in a series
of 49 autopsies on workers in an asbestos manufacturing plant who were shown to have "demonstrable deposits of asbestos in the lungs,"
This, of course, is not necessarily identical with the disease asbea-
tosis. Lynch, himself, points out that, although this is .an incidence
of 8.2?, "both figures are too sifoail for very serious statistical types
of calculation." Nevertheless, later writers have used this paper to
strengthen the case for an association of carcinoma of the lung with
asbestosis. it is of interest to note that Klor:
found only four in
stances of lung cancer in 478 cases of asbestosis, a series 11 tiroes
as large.
Behrens, as quoted In Nierewether
estimated that,
of 309 cases of asbestosis in the literature, 44 showed associated
cancer of the lung--giving u incidence of 14,25^, This is another case
of generalizing an incidence obtained in a group of cases which were