LETTER
Monitoring of fluoro-edenite fibre pollution through the study of sheep lymph nodes as a model of a biological indicator
1 Department of Social and Environmental Medicine, Occupational Medicine Section, University of Messina, Italy
2 Department of Veterinary Public Health, Pathology Section, University of Messina, Italy
3 Department of Material Physics and Engineering, University of Ancona, Italy
4 Department of Anatomy, Diagnostic Pathology, Forensic Medicine, Hygiene and Public Health, University of Catania, Italy
5 Department of Molecular Pathology, Occupational Medicine Section, Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Prof. M Valentino
Department of Molecular Pathology, Occupational Medicine Section, Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Via Tronto 10/a 60020 Torrette, Ancona, Italy; m.valentino@univpm.it
Keywords: environmental pollution; fluoro-edenite; lymph node; sheep
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A significantly increased standardised rate of mortality from pleural mesothelioma, comparable to that reported in asbestos exposed cohorts, has been recorded in Biancavilla (SW slope of Mt Etna, Sicily)1,2 and attributed to exposure to fluoro-edenite, a fibrous amphibole found in the inert material extracted from a nearby stone quarry.1
It is well known that sheep lung is anatomically and physiologically comparable to human lung,3 and lymph nodes are considered better indicators of previous asbestos exposure than lung parenchyma.4
We therefore measured the concentration of fluoro-edenite fibres in the lymph nodes (tracheobronchial and one middle mediastinal node) draining the lung lobes of sheep habitually grazing 3 km from the town using histology (haematoxylin-eosin and Perls method), light (LM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), as well as an energy dispersion spectrometry x ray analysis apparatus in order to assess the pollution due to airborne dust material.
Sixty healthy sheep randomly selected from
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