ABSTRACT
Cases of severe pulmonary “brosis in association with asbestos were “rst described in the early 1900s.1 In 1914, T. Fahr, a German pathologist, described the pathological features of interstitial pulmonary “brosis in a 35-year-old asbestos worker and attributed them to asbestos.2 In 1924, Cooke3 coined the term asbestosis and published a detailed pathological description of the disease. In 1938, Dreessen et al.4 reported ground-glass changes in chest radiographs of 440 South Carolina textile workers and described the relationship of abnormalities to the duration and intensity of exposure to asbestos. Although their study was criticized, they concluded that if the concentration of asbestos in the air did not exceed 5 million particles per cubic foot, then no radiographic abnormalities would occur. Thus, this concentration of asbestos was adopted as the environmental standard at that time. A similar study was done by Merewether and Price,5 who in 1930 reported on the effects of asbestos dust on the lungs and the issue of dust suppression in the asbestos industry.
