Silicotic Lungs: The Minerals they Contain
Authors: Jones William R. 
Published: May 2009

The results of these investigations on the mineral residues obtained from twenty-nine silicotic lungs, and of the examination of the rocks and materials which gave rise to the inhaled dusts causing these cases of silicosis, lead to the following conclusions:

(1) The bulk of the mineral residues obtained from every silicotic lung investigated by the author consists of minute fibres of the mineral, sericite, a hydrated silicate of aluminium and potassium known also as “secondary white mica.” This mineral is abundantly present also in all the rocks and materials which gave rise to the inhaled dust; and it is present in these rocks and materials in minute fibres and scales of the size it is found in the residues and also in the lung tissue.

(2) Silica in the uncombined state, as quartz, is also present in these residues as relatively coarse and fine grains; it occurs, however, in amounts subordinate to sericite. Especially is this so with regard to the small number of quartz particles, as compared with the countless fibres of sericite.

(3) One relatively large grain of quartz, measuring 10 × 8 × 5 microns such as is found in the residues, is equal in volume to 800 fibres of sericite measuring 2 × 0·5 × 0·5 microns, and contributes as much silica in the chemical analysis of a residue as would 1600 fibres of sericite. This would appear to be out of all proportion to the silicotic effect of one such quartz in the bronchi and bronchioles, compared with the effect in the alveoli of hundreds of fibres of sericite.

(4) Silica in the uncombined state, as quartz, is not the chief cause of silicosis in these and certain other cases. This appears to be conclusively established, it is submitted here, by the following facts: (a) The amount of quartz and the size and form of the quartz grains in the sandstones occurring in the underground working-places in the Scottish Coalfields and in the South Wales Coalfield, are alike. The latter sandstones give rise to dust that has caused scores of cases of silicosis, whereas no authenticated case of silicosis has been produced in the Scottish Coalfields. (b) The gold-bearing quartz conglomerate of South Africa gives rise to dust that has caused thousands of cases of silicosis; the gold-bearing quartz rock of the Kolar Goldfield, India, contains more quartz than the South African rock and yet produces dust that has caused no case of that disease. (c) No quartz-bearing rocks investigated by the author are known to have given rise to silicosis-producing dust except those which also contain abundance of fibrous aggregates of sericite or of fibrous silicate minerals, loosely held together and easily freed into the atmosphere when the rock is drilled and blasted. (d) Rocks which contain a relatively small percentage of quartz (well below the minimum amount in the rock types named in the Silicosis Schemes under English law) but which do contain fibrous silicate minerals such as sericite and sillimanite, as for example at Broken Hill Mines, New South Wales, produce dust that has caused a large number of silicosis cases.

(5) These investigations are not concerned with the pathological condition produced by the minerals in the lungs. Whether they merely act as mechanical irritants causing the growth of fibrous tissue as advocated by some well-known authorities, or induce chemical changes as maintained by certain eminent pathologists, is a question entirely beyond the province of the author. His conclusions do not militate against either theory; on the contrary, they provide the former school with evidence of the presence in the lungs of thousands of acicular fibres that presumably could act as mechanical irritants, and the latter school with evidence of the presence of silicate minerals less stable than quartz and which, because of their physical form, expose far greater surface to volume for any chemical action than do the more compact grains of quartz.

(6) Lastly, it is submitted here that it is mainly the presence in the exploited rocks and materials of fibrous minerals, be they sericite, sillimanite, tremolite, etc. (or a fibrous form of free silica as in chert or of a fibrous rock as in pumice) in aggregates which during the impact of drilling, blasting, or crushing, become freed into the atmosphere as individual fibres, that enables sufficient material in course of time to enter the lungs to cause silicosis. It is not suggested that sufficient minute particles of quartz could not, under any circumstances whatever, enter the lungs to cause silicosis, although the cases here investigated appear to show conclusively that they have not done so; but it is maintained that the fibrous minerals hasten the process so very considerably that their presence in the exploited rocks and materials is of far greater importance in causing this disease than is the presence of quartz.