TNF and autoimmune disease: The pathological features of the local and systemic responses that we observed in mice treated with NFS-rich quartz are in line with the knowledge on quartz toxicity, which includes pulmonary infiltration of phagocytic cells and neutrophils [38, 39], cytokine (i.e., IL-1α, IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α) and chemokine (i.e., CXCL1) secretion, increased collagen deposition [40–43], tumour growth [44], and autoimmune disorders [21, 45, 46].