Man-made vitreous fibers: an overview of studies on their biologic effects.

Clinical and roentgenologic studies have not shown that workers in the MMVF industry have demonstrable pulmonary changes attributable to MMVF exposures. Large scale international experimental studies have demonstrated that MMVF cause neither lung cancer, mesothelioma nor lung fibrosis when inhaled by rats. Other studies have confirmed this and extended these findings also to monkeys and hamsters. Epidemiologic studies on a total of over 40,000 workers in the MMVF industry have failed to demonstrate that exposure to MMVF is associated with a significantly increased risk of death from lung cancer or nonmalignant respiratory disease.