User:O26babas/sandbox

Metsovo Lung is a unique epidemic of domestic asbestos exposure where all inhabitants of a village in NW Greece (Metsovo, population: 5.000) had been exposed in the past to a tremolite asbestos-containing whitewash. As a result there has been an epidemic of malignant mesotheliomas (MM) that had reached, in the beginning, (in the 1980's) an incidence 300 higher than expected in non asbestos exposed populations. This was accompanied by pleural calcifications (PCs) in almost half the adult population. Both, have declined significantly, since the whitewash, has not been used after 1980-1985.

History
In the early 1980's when the Medical School of Ioannina was established, a group of Pneumonologists headed by S.H.Constantopoulos started encountering, almost on a daily basis, roentgenogram like this of Figure 1 with extensive PCs. They all belonged to inhabitants of Metsovo. Much to their surprise, nobody was excited with this unusual picture. As a matter of fact they were reassured that this was very common to Metsovites and was the result of old tuberculous pleuricy. Since the picture is not even remotely similar to calcified pleuricy from previous tuberculosis, they started looking into the problem, with the following questions: a) are the PCs really so frequent? b) are they really seen only in Metsovites? and, most importantly, c) if not tuberculosis what is their cause?