Asbestos Disease: Exposure Data in the Lung Disease Report

Read the report from the CDC regarding the lung diseases associated with exposure to asbestos and other carcinogens. This section details the data limitations noted in the final report.

The reported OSHA and MSHA exposure data should be considered provisional and subject to revision. The samples were collected for regulatory compliance purposes, rather than for the surveillance of worker exposures, and therefore may not represent exposures typically experienced by workers. Nonetheless, these data provide the best available national exposure information for industries in the U.S.

MSHA and OSHA data for similar agents are presented in this report in a parallel format. The reader is cautioned that MSHA and OSHA are separate agencies with separate regulatory jurisdictions over different industries. The number of compliance samples collected by an agency depends upon many factors, including the size and nature of an industry, congressional actions, and regulatory policies.

To identify pneumoconiotic agents included in the MSHA and OSHA data systems, the following documents were reviewed: Documentation of TLVs® and BEIs®, 6th edition (ACGIH7); Occupational Respiratory Diseases (NIOSH Pub. No. 86-102); the Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards (NIOSH Pub No. 97-140); and various NIOSH Criteria Documents. The resulting list of pneumoconiotic agents (see Table F-1 of Appendix F) represents those agents associated with the most prevalent types of pneumoconiosis, but is not intended to be a complete listing of all agents that may cause pneumoconiosis.

Many of the reported geometric mean exposures include samples that could not be quantified with the sampling and analytical methods used. Rather than assume the values of these samples were zero, estimates of the sample results were used to calculate the geometric mean. The methods for estimating the sample result are described in the exposure section, and readers should keep in mind this uncertainty underlying the geometric mean concentrations presented in this report.

Courtesy of the CDC

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