Furthermore, exposure to crystalline molecules like asbestos (Dostert et al., 2008) and silica (Cassel et al., 2008) results in pulmonary fibrosis (Liu et al., 2013) that is regulated by the NLRP3 inflammasome (Cassel et al., 2008; Dostert et al., 2008). This evidence concerns the gene NLRP3 and pulmonary fibrosis.