Revealing the composition of asbestos bodies in different host organism and asbestos classes

In the lungs, asbestos fibers develop a Fe-coating that might enhance the toxicological outcome of asbestos. Revealing the composition of the Fe-coating would help understanding its interaction with the biological tissues and its possible role of the asbestos bodies in the pathogenesis. In previous experiments, we unraveled the composition of several asbestos bodies (asbestos + Fe-coating) from the lung tissue of former workers of an asbestos plant by combining X-ray absorption spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction.
We now propose to extend the set of samples to lung tissues from subjects with different occupational exposure and from rats exposed to different classes of asbestos (chrysotile, erionite, and crocidolite). This will allow determining if the composition of the asbestos bodies grown on different asbestos classes and in different host organisms is similar. The results will help generalizing the formation mechanisms proposed in our previous works.