Considerable progress in understanding how inhaled minerals cause disease in man has been made in the past two decades. This is mostly due to the great amount of human, animal and cell multidisciplinary studies carried out on silica, asbestos and asbestiforms all around the world. Two previous NATO Workshops on "In Vitro Effects of Mineral Dusts on Cells", have been published in the NATO ASI Series (1985 and 1989). The present NATO-INSERM workshop has focused specifically on a group of silicates, named phyllosilicates because of their sheet structure, of which health related effects have been poorly and sporadically investigated. These silicates are presently largely used as filling materials (kaolin, talc, chlorite), insulating materials (vermiculite, micas), adsorbants (sepiolite, attapulgite) and in many other industrial applications. The estimated annual world production is presently 5.5 million tons of talc (1.8 million for Europe) and only in the United Kingdom about 3.5 million tons of kaolin.
