Italian Mine

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Italian Mine

Operating from 1917 until 1990, the Balangero strip mine was Italy's only chrysotile mine. Silvestri et al. (2001) updated the mortality experience for the cohort that had been earlier investigated by Piolatto et al. (1990) rather than using a similar cohort of Rubino et al. (1979). Piolatto et al. (1990) had observed an excess of mortality of all causes, asbestosis and several cancers. Two observed cases of mesothelioma were reported and 0.3 cases expected based on the death rates in Italy, resulting in a standardized mortality rate (SMR) of 667. Silvestri et al. give the 95th percentile confidence interval (CI) as 81-241, but the upper bound is obviously a typographical error, and the correct value should be 2410 (calculated by Stata version 7.0, Stata Corp.). Nevertheless, this increase of the SMR was not statistically significant for the 1990 study. For the two deaths attributed to "pleural cancer" (mesothelioma), the diagnosis was based on clinical, radiographie, and pleural fluid findings in one case, and by a surgical tissue biopsy for the other one. In the 2001 update, 3 additional pleural mesotheliomas were identified in workers having asbestos fiber exposures of 319, 340, and 1064 f/ml-yr and 8 community cases were observed. The authors made some assumptions to determine that 5 deaths from pleural mesothelioma among the cohort's members should be compared to 0.45 expected cases, but no SMR is reported. A fibrous contaminant with morphology and fiber dimensions similar to amphiboles, called balangeroite, accounts for 0.2-0.5% of the total mass of commercialized chrysotile samples from the mine. Piolatto et al. (1990) state that they could not rule out its contribution to inducing the two cases of mesothelioma in their study. Recent laboratory studies indicate that balangeroite fibers act lexicologically like amphibole asbestos fibers (Groppo et al., 2005; Turci et al., 2005; Grazzano et al., 2005). Likely balangeroite would confound epidemiological associations for chrysotile asbestos. In addition, some crocidolite was processed at Balangero (Browne, 2001).