Recent data on cancer due to asbestos in Sweden

Asbestos exposure in Sweden rapidly grew in the '50s and '60s, and then began to drop at the beginning of the '70s. The number of pleural mesotheliomas due to this exposure increased to some 80 a year during the second half of the '80s, and is rapidly increasing. The jobs with the highest risk are the wood and pulp industry, plumbing, shipbuilding, and, most of all, railroad manufacturing and sugar refineries. Data dealing with peritoneal mesotheliomas are more uncertain, and possibly misleading. As far as lung cancer incidence is concerned, it remains high in plumbers and insulators, while it declined to the expected levels in the other categories of exposed workers.