The incidence of asbestos bodies in the autopsied or resected lungs of tuberculosis patients aged 20 to 59 was investigated by the melting or squeexing methods. Using the melting method on 5g lung tissue specimens, asbestos bodies were found in 4 out of 40 cases (10.0%) from 1937 to 1941, 9 out of 50 cases (18.0%) from 1947 to 1951, 70 out of 101 (69.3%) from 1958 to 1961 and 71 of 95 (74.7%) from 1970 to 1973. Marked increase began around 1950 and the rates roughly reflected the increase in annual amount of asbestos imports to Japan, which also began to increase steeply around 1950.
The incidence was much lower when the squeezing method was employed of when the melting method was used, even though adjacent portions of the same lung were used for methodological comparative tests.
For epidemiological surveys of lung asbestos pollution, sputa of 100 hospitalized respiratory disease patients of various occupations, and 58 healthy police motorcyclists were examined. Tests revealed no asbestos in the sputa of nonasbestos workers, whereas 10 out of 35 (28.8%) asbestos workers in Osaka proved to have asbestos bodies in their sputa, indicating necessity of another sensitive method for the purpose.
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