Asbestos and environmental diseases

Dong-Mug Kang; Young-Ki Kim; Jong-Eun Kim

doi:10.5124/jkma.2012.55.3.214

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Kang, Kim, and Kim: Asbestos and environmental diseases

Focused Issue of This Month

Environmental diseases

Journal of the Korean Medical Association

Journal of the Korean Medical Association 2012; 55(3): 214-222.

Published online: 9 March 2012

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5124/jkma.2012.55.3.214

Asbestos and environmental diseases

Dong-Mug Kang, MD^1,^2,³, Young-Ki Kim, MD^1,³, Jong-Eun Kim, MD^1,³

¹Department of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital, Yangsan, Korea.

²Environmental Health Center for Asbestos, Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital, Yangsan, Korea.

³Research Institute for Convergence of Biomedical Science and Technology, Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital, Yangsan, Korea.

Corresponding author: Young-Ki Kim, mungis@chol.com

Received 19 December 2011 Accepted 29 December 2011

(open-access):

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Asbestos causes several asbestos related diseases (ARDs). Not only occupational asbestos exposure but also environmental asbestos exposure can cause ARDs. In Korea compensation for workers with ARDs has been provided by workers' compensation. Because the asbestos damage relief act (ADRA) was enacted in 2011, ARDs by environmental exposure can now be compensated. Korea is the sixth country in the world to compensate environmental asbestos victims. In the ADRA, the list of compensable diseases eligible for relief consists of lung cancer, malignant mesothelioma, and asbestosis. Because the back ground and criteria of each ARD for relief is different, physicians need to be familiar with all of them in order to deal with ARD patients. In this paper, the properties of asbestos, history of ARDs, and contents of the ADRA are discussed. Although the relationships between occupational asbestos exposure and ARDs have been well established, those for environmental exposure have not. More specifically, the relationship between lung cancer and environmental asbestos exposure is still not clear because of strong confounders. The first wave of asbestos problems arose from occupational exposure directly involving asbestos production, the second wave arose from usage of asbestos products, and the third wave would be related to asbestos ubiquitous in the environment. In Korea the second wave is just beginning to swell. Physicians must to prepare for these waves to crest in the near future.

Keywords: Asbestos, Asbestos related diseases, Environmental exposure, Asbestos damage relief act

Figures and Tables

Figure 1

Asbestos factories and mines in Korea (From Asbestos mine/factory information [Internet]. Yangsan: Korea Research Center for Asbestos-Related Disease; 2012) [7].

Figure 2

Structure for procedure of application and certification by asbestos damage relief act.

Table 1

Classification of asbestos

CAS, Chemical Abstract Service.

Table 2

Definition of categories of probability and intensity for domestic and environmental exposure to asbestos

From Magnani C, et al. Br J Cancer 2000;83:104-111, with permission from Nature Publishing Group [6].

Table 3

Criteria for acceptance of each asbestos related disease in asbestos damage relief act

Table 4

Current status of asbestos damage relief judgment and acceptance

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ORCID iDs: Dong-Mug Kang
https://orcid.org/http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0657-0181
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