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Occupational Medicine 1971;21:118-121
© 1971 Society of Occupational Medicine

research-article

Developmental Changes in Asbestos Bodies and their Significance

James E.H. Milne, Senior Medical Officer

Industrial Hygiene Division, State Health Department Victoria, Australia

When industrial fibres are inhaled they may become "ferruginous bodies" by being coated with a segmented iron-protein envelope. A few ferruginous bodies are demonstrable in almost every human lung using tissue digestion techniques. When large numbers are found they probably arise from industrial exposure to asbestos fibres. That is, they are "asbestos bodies’.

Electron microscope studies can point to whether the central fibre of a ferruginous body is asbestos. Asbestos fibres have longitudinal striation and stepped ends. The asbestos body matures from a thin yellow beaded object to a shorter thicker dark-brown segmented shape, whose coating becomes granulated; fragmentation and phagocytosis then occur.

Asbestos bodies found in sputum signify only asbestos exposure.

With histological sections, the finding of more than one ferruginous body in each slide of a random series indicates that they are probably asbestos bodies.

Large numbers of asbestos bodies in lung plus diffuse fibrosis would indicate asbestosis—and where neoplasia is involved, occupational exposure to asbestos may be causative.

Asbestos bodies may pass unrecognised with resultant failure to establish their relationship to mesothelioma, and the importance is stressed of recognition of the post-mature degenerating granulated asbestos body.


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