Asbestos Pollution

A news article, entitled “Study Finds Asbestos in Nearly Half of Thailand’s Population” by Tim Povtak, was published in CTN News (Chaing Rai News) on July 3, 2019. Unfortunately, it contained some misunderstandings concerning the recent report of Incharoen and her colleagues [1]. For the record, two studies have been conducted in Thailand to search for the presence of asbestos bodies in the lungs of patients who had died of different conditions besides asbestos-related diseases. The first study by Sri umpai et al. [2] was published in 1985. Those researchers reported that, of the 330 cadavers that they had examined, 33 percent were found to contain asbestos bodies [2]. The second study by Incharoen et al. [1] was conducted 30 odd years later; those researchers found an even higher incidence of asbestos bodies, i.e. up to 48.5 percent, in 97 of the 200 cadavers that they had examined [1].