A case-control study (622 cases, 1420 controls) by Professor Julian Peto and others and funded by the UK HSE “A Occupational, domestic and environmental mesothelioma risks in Britain” has just been released.
Some pointers
- By 1970 Britain led the world in asbestos regulation, yet the British mesothelioma death-rate is now the highest in the world, with 1740 deaths in men (1 in 40 of all male cancer deaths below age 80) and 316 in women in 2006. According to the latest HSE projection about 1 in 170 of all British men born in the 1940s will die of mesothelioma.
- Former construction workers, particularly plumbers, electricians and carpenters, constitute the main high risk group, together with insulation workers, shipbuilders and locomotive engineers.
- The predicted total of 90,000 mesotheliomas in Britain between 1970 and 2050 will include approximately 15,000 carpenters. Britain was the largest importer of amosite (brown asbestos) and British carpenters frequently worked with asbestos insulation board containing amosite.
- The US imported far less amosite than Britain but used similar amounts of chrysotile (white asbestos) and more crocidolite (blue asbestos), and US mesothelioma death-rates in middle age are now 3 to 5 times less than British rates.
