Introduction
Sir, I noted with interest the letter on asbestos dressings from A. Cook (BDJ2008; 204: 224).
When I was a houseman at The London Hospital in 1966, I mixed some gingivectomy pack for a patient. He asked me what was in the dressing, and when I told him it contained asbestos he ran hastily out of the clinic! The patient later told me he worked in the Department of Pathology and knew asbestos to be highly carcinogenic, especially on inhalation.
This fact intrigued me so much that I looked into the probable dangers of asbestos, and published an article the following year in the BDJ.1 I understood that following the publication of this article, the use of asbestos-containing packs ceased almost immediately in dental schools throughout the UK.
