Populations at Risk

With growing awareness of the hazards of asbestos exposure, searching inquiries have been directed beyond previously studied populations, such as mining and milling, product manufacturing, shipyards, insulation work, brake repair and brake lining, family contact and neighborhood disease, etc.

The numerical scope of the problem has been considerably expanded by recent investigations of asbestos-associated disease among such diverse groups as railroad workers (42 - 44), merchant marine seamen (45, 46), as well as a variety of construction trades, custodians and building maintenance workers, power production and public utilities, and maintenance and repair in a wide variety of situations.

Still incompletely quantified populations are being added to the more than 10 million survivors of the 27.5 million workers previously enumerated in 10 of the most important asbestos-exposure trades, considered significantly exposed from 1940 to 1979 by Nicholson and his colleagues (47).

The building industry is of particular importance, not only because of the large number of workers who entered the various construction trades from 1950 to 1970, and therefore very much at risk of asbestos-associated cancer death for the next 40 years or so, but also because of the continued exposure of construction workers as they do maintenance and repair work in buildings and facilities still laden with asbestos installed in previous years.

Recent studies have shown significant proportions of workers in such diverse trades as sheet metal, pipefitting, plumbing, drywall construction, painting, carpentry, and electrical work to have radiological evidence of asbestotic abnormalities in clinical surveys (48-50).

To review the references in Dr. Selikoff’s article see Pages 275-276 of his report.