Studies Link Gastrointestinal and Colon Cancers to Asbestos, Continued

However, other mortality studies of asbestos workers found no significantly increased risk for gastrointestinal or colorectal cancers.

Other reviewers found no causal relationship between workers' exposure to asbestos and gastrointestinal cancer.

Some evidence shows that short-term (acute) oral exposure to asbestos might bring on precursor lesions of colon cancer, and that long-term (chronic) oral exposure might increase the incidence of gastrointestinal tumors.

Most epidemiologic studies to see if cancer incidence is higher than expected in places with high levels of asbestos in drinking water detected increases in cancer deaths or incidence rates at one or more tissue sites (mostly in the gastrointestinal tract).

Some of these increases were statistically significant. However, the magnitudes of increases in cancer incidence tended to be rather small and might be related to other risk factors such as smoking.

Also, these studies were conducted on worker populations, with generally higher exposures; still, only small and inconsistent elevations have been reported.

There is relatively little consistency in the observed increases across studies.