Modelling mesothelioma risk for workers assembling military gas masks
A new IOM paper has been published on the risks of mesothelioma.'Modelling mesothelioma risk for workers assembling military gas masks' by John Cherrie, Hilary Cowie and Alan Jones (OEM epub 9th May) is a reply to a short report by JC McDonald and others, which presented an updated analysis of a cohort of predominantly women who made gas masks incorporating crocidolite asbestos between 1940 and 1944. McDonald noted that the mesothelioma rate levelled off after around thirty years, and attributed this to clearance of fibres from the lung. The report, however, recognised that the clearance factor does not solely explain the absence of deaths in the final years. The Cherrie paper models the risk to look at the time course of the predictions compared to the reported data.
The paper can be viewed at...
http://oem.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/63/12/852