Monitoring of fluoro-edenite fibre pollution through the study of sheep lymph nodes as a model of a biological indicator

A significantly increased standardised rate of mortality from pleural mesothelioma, comparable to that reported in asbestos exposed cohorts, has been recorded in Biancavilla (SW slope of Mt Etna, Sicily)1,2 and attributed to exposure to fluoro-edenite, a fibrous amphibole found in the inert material extracted from a nearby stone quarry.1 It is well known that sheep lung is anatomically and physiologically comparable to human lung,3 and lymph nodes are …