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The Chemical Environment
Published in Vilma R. Hunt, Kathleen Lucas-Wallace, Jeanne M. Manson, Work and the Health of Women, 2020
Vilma R. Hunt, Kathleen Lucas-Wallace, Jeanne M. Manson
The detailed clinical course of a woman chemical worker exposed to beryllium, has been described by McCallum et al.158 In their summary they state that pregnancy was associated with relief of symptoms which persisted for some months after a normal birth. The detailed paper, however, reports that at about 4 months gestation, she experienced spontaneous pneumothorax, delivered at 8 months gestation, and died 7 months later of acute right heart failure. The onset of symptoms 2 years before pregnancy (parity not noted) was 2 years after termination of high exposure in an English laboratory with measured levels of beryllium of 2.7 μg/m3 and other rooms with levels of over 30 μg/m3. The present federal standard for beryllium is 2 μg/m3 as an 8-hr time-weighted average with an acceptable ceiling concentration of 5 μg/m3. The acceptable maximum peak is 25 μg/m3 for a maximum of 30 minutes.159 Severe lassitude, loss of weight, breathlessness, and radiological lung changes indicated the chronicity of the beryllium poisoning. Pregnancy itself provided some improvement of symptoms, sufficient to allow suspension of corticotropin therapy. It would be of considerable interest to compare the course of pregnancy in the women in the U.S. Beryllium Registry in detail.
Response to Letter to the Editor from Egilman, Castleman and Bird (2020) concerning Bullock (2020), Perspectives on the knowledge of asbestos disease in the United States – what was known, by whom and when
Published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, 2020
Missing from Hamilton’s list of dangerous trades were handling asbestos ore, or trades using asbestos to manufacture products (Hamilton 1943). Hamilton did not write a toxicological profile for asbestos, similar to the ones she published for lead, painters’, explosives, coal-tar dyes, or the rubber industry. (Hamilton 1910, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1917, and 1921) In addition, she did not include a section about asbestos in her seminal text Industrial Toxicology published in 1934, or within the 2nd edition published in 1949 (Hamilton 1934, 1949). Asbestos clearly did not rise to the same level of risk as the other occupational hazards she identified within her publications. It was not until the 3rd edition published in 1974, that a specific toxicology section included asbestos. (Hamilton 1974) Specifically, a section on fibrogenic dust covered asbestos as an occupational hazard. Hamilton states on page 421 that “asbestos appears to be the occupational illness of the 1960s, very like beryllium poisoning in the 1940s and 1950s” (Hamilton 1974).