Role of occupational asbestos exposure in Hungarian lung cancer patients

Abstract

The annual incidence of lung cancer in Hungary is about 6,000. Since in our series of lung cancer patients about 4% were observed, which could be accepted as representing occupational disease because of a cumulative exposure to 25 fibre-years or more, the annual asbestos related lung tumour incidences may be estimated to be approximately 150 or more. The proportion of nearly two estimated cases of lung cancer per case of pleural mesothelioma corresponds to international experience. Up to now, lung cancer cases only exceptionally have been registered as occupational diseases, i.e. they were seriously under-diagnosed in Hungary. For improving this situation, diagnostic assistance by a self-interview with a questionnaire covering the working history for all newly diagnosed lung cancer patients would be helpful.

Occupational asbestos exposure among respiratory cancer patients in Lithuania

“…This is consistent with the data indicating the wide and uncontrolled use of asbestos in Lithuania during the years of the Soviet Union's exports [Smailytė et al, 2003]. The distribution of exposed cancer cases by industry, occupation, and latency period is similar to those reported in other studies where construction, asbestoscement industry, ship building, and maintenance contributed the largest number of asbestos-related diseases [Mandi et al, 2000]. The proportion of heavily exposed (!25 fiber years) patients was only slightly less than in Hungary, where 4% of lung cancer patients with an asbestos exposure of !25 fiber years were found, and was also somewhat lower than the estimates of asbestos-related lung cancers in different populations [Tossavainen, 1997a;Mandi et al, 2000;Ameille et al, 2004;Henderson et al, 2004].…”

“…Due to the long induction period (20-40 years), the associated risk remains high decades after exposure [Henderson et al, 2004]. It is estimated that occupational exposure to asbestos could be responsible for about 4-7% or more of lung cancers and 80-90% of pleural mesotheliomas in men in industrialized countries [Tossavainen, 1997a;Mandi et al, 2000;Ameille et al, 2004]. Epidemiologic and toxicologic studies indicate that all types of asbestos, including chrysotile and amphiboles, cause malignant neoplasms; however, chrysotile fibers do not accumulate in lung tissue to the extent that amphiboles do, and they are removed more rapidly [Nicholson and Raffn, 1995;Yano et al, 2001].…”

Occupational exposure to asbestos and man-made vitreous fibres and risk of lung cancer: a multicentre case-control study in Europe

“…22 The prevalence of occupational asbestos exposure in the present study, 11.4% in Central and Eastern Europe is comparable to what could be expected in a community-based study in Europe but was lower than that of lung cancer patients classified as exposed to five or more fibre-years in a series of 297 lung cancer cases from Hungary (18.7%). 24 The prevalence of occupational asbestos exposure among controls from the UK appears to be high (37.1%) compared to previous population-or hospital-based case-control studies in this country (11-26%). 9 Part of the explanation could be that the UK part of the study represents only the Liverpool area, which is a highly industrialised city including shipyards, and therefore may show a higher prevalence of exposure than the country overall.…”

Identification of roofing materials with Discriminant Function Analysis and Random Forest classifiers on pan-sharpened WorldView-2 imagery – a comparison

“…Asbestos mapping has a wide literature, and several authors have attempted to identify this dangerous type of roofing. If the material is damaged or weathered, asbestos causes diseases such as asbestosis, mesothelioma or lung-cancer, due to its microfiber content (Mándi, A. et al 2000;Petja, P.M. et al 2010). Most municipalities have to face this environmental issue, but, even at settlement-level, comprehensive inventories do not exist; therefore, a supervised classification of remotely sensed images with an appropriate accuracy assessment provides an accessible alternative (Comber, A. et al 2012).…”