Document EvjN5R2doBQLjgnD4oLwqYkbx

FILE NAME: New York State & NY Times (NY) DATE: 1974 Sept 19 DOC#: NY064 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: NYT Article - Cancer Found in Asbestos Workers' Kin Cancer Found in Asbestos Workers' Kin By JANE E BRODY New York Times (1857-Currentfile); Sep 19,1974; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2002) Pg 1 Cancer Found in Asbestos Workers' Kin By JANE E. BRODY The 933 men who produced asbestos insulation at a Pater son, N. J., plant in the nineteen- forties came home 0(1 day from the dusty factory covered with asbestos fibers. Today, some 30 years later, many wives, children arid other persons who were in contact with these men at home are beginning to show the effects of their peripheral and often brief exposure to this insidious mineral. ' A study by Mount Sinai Medi cal Center has shown a high incidence of iung abnormalities among the workers' relatives, and four persons who were ex posed as children have devel oped a rare, usually fatal form of cancer called mesothelioma, the only known cause of which is exposure to asbestos. The new study, being con ducted under a grant from the National Institute of Environ mental Health Sciences, adds a new dimension to the already well-established dangers of asbestos, a ubiquitous mineral with some 3,000 uses, Thou sands of workers have suc cumbed to asbestos-related can cers and lung disease,, includ ing many who worked at the Paterson factory. Now, evidence is mounting that far less than the intense exposure of the work environ ment is necessary to produee asbestos-related disease.. Urn new evidence raises questions not only about the adequacy of regulations designed to protect asbestos workers but also about the hazards the general public may face from exposure to the persistent fibers of as bestos. Asbestos fibers can be found virtually everywhere -- in air as a result of the erosion of brake iinings, air conditioning systems, floor tiles and other sources; in commercial bever ages that have been passed through asbestos filters; in water supplies that are carried through asbestos pipes. The danger of asbestos to Continued on Ppge 27, Column 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner A Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Cancer Found in Relatives of Asbestos Workers 30 Years After Contact those who work with it was lender ^ , P r;nK"' inscribed X-ra?sPto s early as the first century,Kave g j(|n(js 0f abnormalities but it was not until British jn their lungs common to asbes- i studies in the 1920's that any tos workers. In some cases i attempt was made to protect where X -ray abnormalities workers from its effects were found in the family, the In the years since, workers CwOorpklearnht afodrbweielny aatfethwedUayNsA. R- exposed to asbestos have been In the last three months, shown to face a greatly in- three persons who were child- creased risk of developing lungTen a t the time their relatives cancer, mesothelioma, cancers worked in the Paterson plant of and the gastrointestinal tract asbestosis, a scarring of were " "i fou.nd. to have . mesothelio.. . . . the lungs. These effects gen June at the age of 44. rally do not show up untilHer father had worked the ]ate two or three -- and sometimes even four -- decades after the first exposure to asbestos. shift at the UNARCO plant for a year in the mid-194C's, and she took him a hot meat every evening, waiting outside' the plant for her father to .pick it up. Another patient was in directly exposed to asbestos for just six months when she was four years old, and in the third case, the. patient's father had worked at the plant for a year. This patient's sister, a nonsmo ker, died of lung cancer at the age of 39- ' A fourth person, the daughter of the man who developed the asbestos material made by UN ARCO, died in 1965 of mesothe lioma, the same disease that took her father's life 14 years earlier. The new spate of mesothelio ma cases is among several re cent developments regarding asbestos that have caused alarm among the Mount Sinai investigators and stimulated la bor leaders and others to chal lenge tiie adequacy of current protections against the time bomb effects of this persistent mineral. Dr. Selikoff fears an eventual "epidemic" of mesothelioma since, he says, "what we are seeing today tefiects the size of the work force in the 1930's and 1940's when asbestos pro duction was one-tenth what it is today." .More than one mil lion persons, have at one time worked directly with asbestos. Dr. Selikoff is also worried about the nearly three million Americans who worked in as bestos-ridden shipyards during World War n . Cases of meso thelioma have recently begun to appear among these people. The other developments that are causing concern include a British medical report indicat ing that the levels of asbestos that Federal reguiations say workers can safely inhale may In-Jact cause lung disease and cancer years later. Another British study showed that rats can develop mesothe lioma after as little as one day of inhaling asbestos fibers. And a preliminary, unpub lished Canadian study also in rats suggests that the consump tion of small amounts of asbes tos fiDers spectrum ocfa n resuit in cancerous a tu wide mors, a finding th at could be of signi ficance to th residents of Min. nesota who for the last 18 years have been drinking water from Lake Superior th a t is con taminated with asbestos from the wastes of a mining compa nyA United States Court of Ap peals has allowed -the Lake Superior dumping to continue because the Government could not demonstrate, that Minne sotans had suffered ill effects from drinking the asbestoscontaining- water or breathing the fiber-filled air. A Two-Decade Study . For two decades, Dr. Irving J. Selikoff. director of Mount Sinai's Laboratory of Environ mental Sciences, has been studying the effects of asbes tos on the men who worked at the Union Asbestos and Rubber Company (UNARCO, as it is commonly called) in Paterson. The factory was in operation . from 1941 to 1954. These men came home each day covered with the whitish fi bers of asbestos -- on their .clothes, in their hair, in their i lunch pails. Sometimes they brought home samples of the fireproof product they made for their children to play with. According to Dr. William Ni cholson of the Mount Sinai team, asbestos fibers can still ; be found in the attic dust of the . homes of workers who left, the : plant as many as 30 years ago. A year ago, the Mount Sinai l: tMeamthobseegawn haostulidveydofwtihthe fate the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.