Ferruginous body

A ferruginous body is a histopathologic finding in interstitial lung disease suggestive of significant asbestos exposure (asbestosis). Asbestos exposure is associated with occupations such as shipbuilding, roofing, plumbing, and construction.

Ferruginous bodies. H&E stain.

They appear as small brown nodules in the septum of the alveolus. Ferruginous bodies are typically indicative of asbestos inhalation (when the presence of asbestos is verified they are called "asbestos bodies"). In this case they are fibers of asbestos coated with an iron-rich material derived from proteins such as ferritin and hemosiderin.[1] Ferruginous bodies are believed to be formed by macrophages that have phagocytosed and attempted to digest the fibers.

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gollark: Consume "bees".
gollark: But half of that system would probably be useless or a disadvantage, so it would never evolve.
gollark: You could entirely fix cancer through better DNA error correction, for instance, and the technology for that has been developed as part of communication/storage systems we have now (although admittedly implementing it in biology would probably be very very hard).
gollark: On the other hand, through actually having a planning process and not just blindly seeking local minima, a human can make big changes to designs even if the middle ones wouldn't be very good, which evolution can't.
gollark: And despite randomly breaking in bizarre ways, living stuff has much better self-repair than any human designs.

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