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FILE NAME Newspaper & Magazine Articles NMA DATE 1973 May 31 DOC NMA073 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION NYT - Mt. Sinai Is Named A Research Center for Asbestos Study Mt. Sinai Is Named A Research Center For Asbestos Study By JANE BRODY Npgew York Times Currenfitle May 31 1973 ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Tunes 1851 - 2002 Mt. Sinai IsNamed A Research Center : ForFor Asbestos Study BY JANE E. BRODY The Mount Sinai School of Medicine here was named yesterday as the site of the nation's seventh environmental health sciences research center Established under a year Federal grant of million the new facility will focus its research on the health effects of asbestos The work will be under the direction of Dr. Irving J. Selikoff whose studies over the last two decades have identified asbestos as an im- portant cause of lung disease among and cancer workers who are occupationally exposed to the fibrous mineral More recently Dr. Selikoff has begun to look at the health risks to ordinary persons who experience prolonged perhaps lifelong exposure to comparatively low levels of asbestos in the air The air of large urban areas is heavily contaminated with asbestos particles and the lungs of nearly all people who live in such areas have been found contain these particles Asbestos is widely used to fireproof buildings to line air- conditioning ducts and as brake linings among other things Once asbestos particles lodge in lung tissue they seem to re- main there years In the last two years Dr. Selikoff who is professor of community medicine at Mount Sinai called attention to the likelihood that asbestos diseases may develop three or more decades after exposure to the substance The announcement of the Federal grant from the Nation- al Institute of Environmental Sciences was made at a news conference here by Caspar W. Weinberger Secretary of Health ducation and Welfare Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner Further reproduction prohibited without permission