Asbestos Fibers and Other Elongate Mineral Particles: State of the ...

esearch effort, periodically reviewing the various
discipline-specific research programs to
help ensure that the most appropriate research
is accomplished in a timely and coordinated
manner and to help maintain the scientific
quality of the research.
4.2 Research Priorities
The key issues discussed in Section 2.10 include
several research needs: (1) for the asbestos minerals,
development of a clearer understanding of
the important dimensional and physicochemical
determinants of pathogenicity; (2) for other
EMPs, such as those from nonasbestiform habits
of the asbestos minerals and erionite, development
of a deeper understanding of the determinants
of toxicity; and (3) development of
analytical methods that can differentiate EMPs
and quantify airborne exposures to EMPs. To
begin addressing these issues, infrastructure
projects should be developed and initiated with
input from the study groups.
One such infrastructure project is the development
of a standardized set of terms that can be
used to clearly and precisely describe minerals
and other scientific concepts. This is needed to
help with the planning of research projects and
to effectively communicate research results.
This effort should involve representatives from
each of the relevant scientific disciplines.
Another infrastructure project that should be
considered at the onset of prioritizing research
is the development of criteria and logistics for
establishing a mineral reference repository. Initially,
representative samples from the known
asbestos deposits should be procured and carefully
and comprehensively characterized. If
samples of these repository minerals are further
processed in the course of conducting research,
the processed materials will need to be
fully characterized as well. Concomitant with
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this characterization effort should be the development
of a mineralogical research effort addressing
issues pertaining to the identification
of minerals that might be found on airborne
samples collected at various workplace environments
and to develop further and deeper understanding
of mineralogical properties that may
contribute to the toxicity of particles.
One of the earliest research efforts will be preliminary
systematic collection and evaluation
of available information on (1) industries/occupations/job
tasks/processes with exposure to
various types of asbestos fibers and other EMPs,
(2) numbers of workers exposed, (3) characteristics
and levels of exposures, and (4) associated
particulate exposures. The knowledge generated
from these efforts will be needed to identify the
EMPs that workers are exposed to and worker
populations that have the potential to be included
in epidemiological studies. In addition to ascertaining
EMP exposures and EMP-exposed
populations in the United States, networking
and other tools should be used to identify potential
international populations for epidemiological
studies. Representative samples of the
EMPs identified through these efforts should
be procured, characterized, and included in the
mineralogical reference repository. After thorough
characterization, these samples can be
classified and prioritized for use in the toxicological
studies.
A part of this early effort should be the development
of a comprehensive and integrated
public-use information management system to
warehouse (1) the mineral characterization information
generated on the reference samples;
(2) data generated from hazard and health surveillance
activities; (3) information on the minerals
tested and the methods used, as well as
the results of toxicological studies; and (4) the
data gathered from epidemiological and other
NIOSH CIB 62 • Asbestos