They may want to try experimental therapies appropriate for dust-induced lung disease. The responsibility to notify and warn is a common-sense, moral imperative despite the silence of the US government over the past 25 years. Careful analyses of tissue specimens can be very informative. Of course, the research opportunities are tremendous. New causes for pulmonary sarcoidosis can be found.
Prevention is possible.
A review of the history of public health reveals that sarcoid diagnoses among dust-exposed workers may be the most famous and most important sentinel events in medicine. The story of the fluorescent light bulb workers is a wonderful sarcoidosis story about preventing lung disease among millions of people worldwide. Sarcoid diagnoses due to exposures to titanium, aluminum, cobalt and other toxic materials also show the value of sarcoid diagnoses in history. Similarly, the human devastation caused by government silence and secrecy under the direction of government lawyers has proven repeatedly to be foolish. Currently there is a lot at stake with this modern sarcoidosis mystery.