Irving Selikoff
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Irving J. Selikoff (January 15, 1915 – May 20, 1992) was a medical researcher who in the 1960s established a link between the inhalation of asbestos particles and lung-related ailments. His work is largely responsible for the regulation of asbestos today. He also co-discovered a treatment for
tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
.


Background

Irving J. Selikoff was born to a
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family in Brooklyn in 1915. He graduated from
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1935 and attended Royal Colleges Scotland for his medical degree, graduating in 1941. He later interned in Newark, New Jersey, and joined the Mount Sinai Medical Center as an assistant in anatomy and physiology. Selikoff was married to Cecelia Shiffrin.


Occupational Safety and Health

In the 1960s, Selikoff documented
asbestos-related diseases Asbestos-related diseases are disorders of the lung and pleura caused by the inhalation of asbestos fibres. Asbestos-related diseases include non-malignant disorders such as asbestosis (pulmonary fibrosis due to asbestos), diffuse pleural thicken ...
among industrial workers. He found that workers exposed to asbestos often had scarred lung tissue 30 years after exposure. His research is credited with having pressured the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration The Occupational Safety and Health Administration'' (OSHA ) is a large regulatory agency of the United States Department of Labor that originally had federal visitorial powers to inspect and examine workplaces. Congress established the agenc ...
(OSHA) to limit workplace exposure to asbestos. In the 1950s, Selikoff had opened a general-medicine practice called the Paterson Clinic in Paterson, New Jersey. A few years later, the Asbestos Workers Union asked him to add their membership to his practice. He agreed, and business picked up noticeably. In a few years, however, Selikoff noticed surprising events; several new cases of pleural mesothelioma were diagnosed in a year—the expected incidence was about 5/100,000. (The new cohort (asbestos workers) were still a small fraction of the clinic's patient list, but this small group faced grave and novel risks.) This anomaly led Selikoff into an examination of the relation between asbestos exposure and mesothelioma. He became aware of hundreds of articles previously published on this issue. He engaged in additional studies of groups of asbestos workers, in particular shipyard workers including those at the
Long Beach Naval Shipyard The Long Beach Naval Shipyard (Long Beach NSY or LBNSY), which closed in 1997, was located on Terminal Island between the city of Long Beach and the San Pedro district of Los Angeles, approximately 23 miles south of the Los Angeles Internation ...
. By 1965, he had conducted various studies, published several articles, conducted special scientific symposia, and been interviewed by ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''. Each of these raised public awareness of the issue, which had been known to the occupational health community but which had not yet reached widespread public awareness. One of the most well-known and important was the international conference on the "Biological Effects of Asbestos" under the auspices of the renowned New York Academy of Sciences. The results of these presentations were publiced in Volume 132 of the ''Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences'' published in 1965. He has received awards from the American Public Health Association, the
New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wi ...
, and the American Cancer Society. He was also awarded the Albert
Lasker Award The Lasker Awards have been awarded annually since 1945 to living persons who have made major contributions to medical science or who have performed public service on behalf of medicine. They are administered by the Lasker Foundation, which was ...
for Clinical Medical Research in 1955. In 1982 he co-founded the
Collegium Ramazzini Founded in 1982, Collegium Ramazzini is an independent, international academy with 180 invited members from more than 30 countries. Its members are internationally renowned experts in the fields of occupational and environmental health, including Dr ...
along with Cesare Maltoni and other scientists. He wrote more than 350 scientific articles and two books, edited 11 books and founded two journals. He was the former head of the American Thoracic Society, the Collegium Ramazzini and New York Academy of Medicine. He was a consultant to the World Health Organization, the National Cancer Institute and other agencies, businesses and unions. U.S. Representative Carolyn B. Maloney presented a Congressional Record tribute in honor of Dr. Selikoff in October 2015. The tribute was presented at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and is on display at the Mount Sinai Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health. Prior to Selikoff's publications in this area, the US "had been the world's greatest consumer of asbestos." Part of the contrary perspective was presented by a Nathan A. Schachtman, an adjunct lecturer at the Columbia Law School. He stated that Selikoff and his supporters organized a lopsided medical conference, writing “One can only imagine the hue and cry that would arise if a defendant company had funded a lopsided medical conference, arranged for the conference to feature defendant’s expert witnesses, set out to give short shrift to opposing points of view, invited key judges to attend the conference, and paid for the judges’ travel and hotel expenses.” This quote from Schachtman came from a web site he maintained, unlike the quote from McCulloch and Tweedale, whose comments were published only after being accepted by reviewers for a refereed academic journal. Selikoff's efforts to publicize his research and that of others placed him at the center of controversies surrounding asbestos. In efforts to protect the industry, criticisms were made of Selikoff exaggerating the risks of asbestos and even committing medical fraud. However, most of these claims were inspired by the asbestos industry or its sympathizers, “and for much of his career he was the victim of a sustained and orchestrated campaign to discredit him. The most serious criticisms usually more accurately describe his detractors than Selikoff himself".


Mount Sinai and the Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health

In 1966 Selikoff founded and became the director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Division of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, the nation's first hospital division dedicated to the field. He retired as division director at Mount Sinai in 1985 but remained active in research. After his death, it was renamed the "Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine" in his honor, and subsequently named "Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health".


Irving J. Selikoff Award and Lecture

The Irving J. Selikoff Award and Lecture was instituted in 1993 by the Collegium Ramazzini. The award is given periodically to a scientist or humanist whose studies and achievements have contributed to the protection of workers' health and the environment. Recipients of this award include: * 1995 - Professor Cesare Maltoni * 2006 - Professor Yasunosuke Suzuki * 2007 - Dr. Morando Soffritti * 2008 - Dr. Philip J. Landrigan * 2009 - Dr. Stephen M. Levin


Death

Selikoff continued to research the effects of asbestos up to the age of 75. A resident of
Ridgewood, New Jersey Ridgewood is a village in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, its population was 24,958,The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood.


External links


Safety and Health Hall of Fame InternationalMount Sinai Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health
(discusses current activities of an institution renamed in honor of Dr. Selikoff) *
New York and New Jersey Education and Research Center The New York and New Jersey Education and Research Center is one of eighteen Education and Research Centers funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The NYNJERC was established in 1978. The New York-New Jersey E ...
(Dr. Selikoff was the Founding Director of the center)


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Selikoff American occupational health practitioners 1992 deaths 1915 births 20th-century American Jews Jewish physicians Asbestos Columbia University alumni People from Ridgewood, New Jersey Recipients of the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award Physicians from New Jersey 20th-century American physicians Members of the National Academy of Medicine