Professor Ian Shaw, University of Canterbury

Professor Ian Shaw is an author, broadcaster and academic. He has worked in government science, the pharmaceuticals industry and in several universities.  He is currently Professor of Toxicology at the University of Canterbury. Ian will outline the history of asbestos and its use in New Zealand which frequently led to asbestosis in exposed workers. He will then explore how airborne asbestos fibres get deep into the lungs causing severe irritation (asbestosis) and then drill their way through lung tissues, eventually impacting the mesothelial cells that line the lung’s surface. He will show how asbestos fibres interfere with genes in the mesothelial cells leading to their uncontrolled proliferation and the initiation of the inevitably fatal cancer, mesothelioma. Finally, he will draw similarities between asbestos fibres and some sharp silica fibres which lead to silicosis, and warn that workplace exposure to airborne silica might be the precursor to a new wave of mesothelioma.