Department of Pathology and School of Environment, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
J Toxicol Environ Health B Crit Rev. 2011;14(1-4):3-39. doi: 10.1080/10937404.2011.556045.
Although asbestos research has been ongoing for decades, this increased knowledge has not led to consensus in many areas of the field. Two such areas of controversy include the specific definitions of asbestos, and limitations in understanding exposure-response relationships for various asbestos types and exposure levels and disease. This document reviews the current regulatory and mineralogical definitions and how variability in these definitions has led to difficulties in the discussion and comparison of both experimental laboratory and human epidemiological studies for asbestos. This review also examines the issues of exposure measurement in both animal and human studies, and discusses the impact of these issues on determination of cause for asbestos-related diseases. Limitations include the lack of detailed characterization and limited quantification of the fibers in most studies. Associated data gaps and research needs are also enumerated in this review.
尽管对石棉的研究已经持续了几十年，但这方面的知识增加并没有在许多领域达成共识。其中两个有争议的领域包括对石棉的具体定义，以及对各种石棉类型和暴露水平与疾病的暴露-反应关系的理解存在局限性。本文回顾了当前的监管和矿物学定义，以及这些定义的可变性如何导致在讨论和比较石棉的实验实验室和人类流行病学研究方面出现困难。本文还审查了动物和人类研究中暴露测量的问题，并讨论了这些问题对确定与石棉有关的疾病原因的影响。局限性包括大多数研究中对纤维的详细特征描述和有限的定量。本文还列举了相关的数据差距和研究需求。
