Man Dies of Lung Disease After Working With Countertops, Doctors Report

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, May 28, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- An otherwise healthy man died of an incurable lung disease after breathing in fine particles while making Corian countertops for almost two decades, doctors report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The 64-year-old man, Leroy Eckardt of Mount Vernon, Wash., spent about 16 years working on Corian at his mom-and-pop countertop business, inhaling dust as he ground, machined, drilled and sanded the material, said Dr. Ganesh Raghu. He is a professor at the University of Washington and director of the Center for Interstitial Lung Disease at UW Medicine.

Raghu believes that the inhaled Corian dust caused Eckardt to develop pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that scars the tissue of the lungs and makes it increasingly difficult for patients to breathe.

"He rarely wore a mask while working on the Corian," Raghu said. "He didn't think anything of it, because he didn't think this was causing any problems."

Eckardt's health steadily deteriorated, and he died of respiratory failure seven years after his diagnosis.

Pulmonary fibrosis affects about 140,000 Americans, and is most common in people between people the ages of 50 and 75, according to the American Lung Association. There's no cure, and many people live only three to five years past diagnosis.

Made by DuPont Co., Corian is a material composed of acrylic polymer and aluminum trihydrate.

Doctors found aluminum trihydroxide particles in the diseased tissue of the man's lungs during a biopsy at the time of his diagnosis. Raghu said the particles in Eckardt's lungs appeared to match Corian dust samples that the patient supplied from his workshop.

Raghu said this is the only case he knows of in which Corian has been associated with pulmonary fibrosis, but added that one of his co-authors has heard of other cases. They report on the case in a letter in the May 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Man Dies of Lung Disease After Working With Countertops, Doctors Report