An entire generation probably first learned the word “mesothelioma” and its link to asbestos from those ubiquitous commercials in the 1990s and 2000s. You know the one: “if you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma you may be entitled to financial compensation.” These commercials made it seem like mesothelioma suddenly came out of nowhere. Was this a newly discovered disease? Wasn’t asbestos banned? How did asbestos cause mesothelioma? Heck, what even was asbestos? By seeking to answer all those questions and more, this episode picks up where those commercials left off. We detail how teeny tiny asbestos fibers can wreak immense devastation, untangle the long human history of asbestos products, and assess the current status of this fibrous mineral, which is disappointingly far from banned worldwide. No story of asbestos would be complete without a spotlight on the town of Libby, Montana, where brave crusaders continue to fight against a company whose callous negligence led to injury, death, and widespread environmental contamination. Tune in to find out where salamanders, The Wizard of Oz, Charlemagne, and The River Wild fit into the story of asbestos.
| History | Biology |
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| Arthur, F. “The History of the Extraction and Uses of Asbestos.” (2005): 1-7. | Mossman, B.T. and Gee, J.B.L., 1989. Asbestos-related diseases. New England Journal of Medicine, 320(26), pp.1721-1730. |
| Bartrip, Peter WJ. “History of asbestos related disease.” Postgraduate Medical Journal 80.940 (2004): 72-76. | Robinson, B.W., Musk, A.W. and Lake, R.A., 2005. Malignant mesothelioma. The Lancet, 366(9483), pp.397-408. |
| Browne, Clare. “Salamander’s wool: The historical evidence for textiles woven with asbestos fibre.” Textile history 34.1 (2003): 64-73. | Mossman, B.T. and Churg, A., 1998. Mechanisms in the pathogenesis of asbestosis and silicosis. American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine, 157(5), pp.1666-1680. |
| Dunning, Kari K., et al. “Mesothelioma associated with commercial use of vermiculite containing Libby amphibole.” Journal of occupational and environmental medicine (2012): 1359-1363. | Robinson, B.W. and Lake, R.A., 2005. Advances in malignant mesothelioma. New England Journal of Medicine, 353(15), pp.1591-1603. |
| Egilman, David, Corey Fehnel, and Susanna Rankin Bohme. “Exposing the “myth” of ABC,“anything but chrysotile”: a critique of the Canadian asbestos mining industry and McGill University chrysotile studies.” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 44.5 (2003): 540-557. | Berman, D.W. and Crump, K.S., 2008. A meta-analysis of asbestos-related cancer risk that addresses fiber size and mineral type. Critical reviews in toxicology, 38(sup1), pp.49-73. |
| Frank, Arthur L., and T. K. Joshi. “The global spread of asbestos.” Annals of global health 80.4 (2014): 257-262. | McCormack, V., Peto, J., Byrnes, G., Straif, K. and Boffetta, P., 2012. Estimating the asbestos-related lung cancer burden from mesothelioma mortality. British Journal of Cancer, 106(3), pp.575-584. |
| Larson, Theodore C., Laura Williamson, and Vinicius C. Antao. “Follow-Up of the Libby, montana screening cohort: a 17-year mortality study.” Journal of occupational and environmental medicine 62.1 (2020): e1. | WHO 15 Feb 2018. Asbestos: elimination of asbestos-related diseases. Factsheet https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/asbestos-elimination-of-asbestos-related-diseases |
| Miller, Albert, Gregory M. Loewen, and Jaime Szeinuk. “Follow-Up of the Libby, Montana Screening Cohort: A 17-Year Mortality Study: Likely Underestimation of Nonmalignant Asbestos-Related Disease.” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 62.5 (2020): e233-e234. | Frank, A.L. and Joshi, T.K., 2014. The global spread of asbestos. Annals of global health, 80(4), pp.257-262. |
| Mossman, Brooke T., et al. “Asbestos: scientific developments and implications for public policy.” Science 247.4940 (1990): 294-301. | Cheng, Y.Y., Rath, E.M., Linton, A., Yuen, M.L., Takahashi, K. and Lee, K., 2020. The current understanding of asbestos-induced epigenetic changes associated with lung cancer. Lung Cancer: Targets and Therapy, pp.1-11. |
| Murray, Robert. “Asbestos: a chronology of its origins and health effects.” Occupational and Environmental Medicine 47.6 (1990): 361-365. | Gaudino, G., Xue, J. and Yang, H., 2020. How asbestos and other fibers cause mesothelioma. Translational Lung Cancer Research, 9(Suppl 1), p.S39. |
| Naik, Samantha Lampert, et al. “Mortality from asbestos-associated disease in Libby, Montana 1979–2011.” Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology 27.2 (2017): 207-213. | Wolff, H., Vehmas, T., Oksa, P., Rantanen, J. and Vainio, H., 2015. Asbestos, asbestosis, and cancer, the Helsinki criteria for diagnosis and attribution 2014: recommendations. Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health, pp.5-15. |
| Pira, Enrico, et al. “Exposure to asbestos: past, present and future.” Journal of Thoracic Disease 10.Suppl 2 (2018): S237. | Albin, M., Magnani, C., Krstev, S., Rapiti, E. and Shefer, I., 1999. Asbestos and cancer: an overview of current trends in Europe. Environmental health perspectives, 107(suppl 2), pp.289-298. |
| Ross, Malcolm, and Robert P. Nolan. “History of asbestos discovery and use and asbestos-related disease in context with the occurrence of asbestos within ophiolite complexes.” Special Papers-Geological Society of America (2003): 447-470. | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Incidence of Malignant Mesothelioma, 1999–2018. USCS Data Brief, no. 27. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, US Department of Health and Human Services; 2022. |
| Geoffrey, Tweedale. “Asbestos and its lethal legacy.” Nature Reviews Cancer 2.4 (2002): 311-314. | Alpert, N., van Gerwen, M. and Taioli, E., 2020. Epidemiology of mesothelioma in the 21st century in Europe and the United States, 40 years after restricted/banned asbestos use. Translational lung cancer research, 9(Suppl 1), p.S28. |
| Walker, Brett L. “Environments of Terror: 9/11, World Trade Center Dust, and the Global Nature of New York’s Toxic Bodies.” Environmental History (2015): 779-795. | Yang, M., Wang, D., Gan, S., Fan, L., Cheng, M., Yu, L., Wang, B., Li, W., Ma, J., Zhou, M. and Chen, W., 2020. Increasing incidence of asbestosis worldwide, 1990–2017: results from the Global Burden of Disease study 2017. Thorax, 75(9), pp.798-800. |
| EPA Actions to Protect the Public from Exposure to Asbestos. https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/epa-actions-protect-public-exposure-asbestos#:~:text=1989%20Partial%20Ban%20on%20the,These%20uses%20remain%20banned. | |
| World cancer research fund, Lung cancer statistics: https://www.wcrf.org/cancer-trends/lung-cancer-statistics/ | |
| Chen, T., Sun, X.M. and Wu, L., 2019. High time for complete ban on asbestos use in developing countries. JAMA oncology, 5(6), pp.779-780. | |
| LaDou, J., Castleman, B., Frank, A., Gochfeld, M., Greenberg, M., Huff, J., Joshi, T.K., Landrigan, P.J., Lemen, R., Myers, J. and Soffritti, M., 2010. The case for a global ban on asbestos. Environmental health perspectives, 118(7), pp.897-901. | |
| Janes, S.M., Alrifai, D. and Fennell, D.A., 2021. Perspectives on the treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma. New England Journal of Medicine, 385(13), pp.1207-1218. |
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