29 The Pneumoconioses

1.1 Overview on pneumoconioses Pneumoconiosis is an occupational lung disease caused by the exposure to dust. This section summarizes the generalities on pneumoconioses, including definitions, epidemiology and clinical manifestations of those occupational and environmental lung diseases. The most important step in the diagnosis of pneumoconiosis in to question the subject regarding specifics of the actual job and the minerals or materials involved in case of history of dust exposure. It is very important to seek a detailed account of workers’ past employment, too; as some pneumoconioses develop after only a brief but intense dust exposure. Lately, many cases have been linked to environmental exposure to dust. This suggests that pneumoconiosis is no more a pathology exclusively related to work. Clinicians and epidemiologists should keep in mind the fact that cigarette smoking has a devastating impact of the health of dust-exposed individuals. Rates of cigarette smoking as high as 80% have been recorded among miners and other dust-exposed populations (Baum et al, 1998; Hammond et al, 1979). Asbestos-related diseases, silicosis and coal worker’s pneumoconiosis (CWP) are most predominant and widely investigated pneumoconioses. Pneumoconioses have relatively specific radiologic features that are not well-known to most physicians. Radiological imaging plays an important role in the diagnosis of those occupational lung diseases, including asbestos-related diseases, Silicosis and coal worker’s pneumoconiosis (Ngatu et al, 2010; Blum et al, 2008). This review is aimed at providing health care workers, especially clinicians, with basic and accurate knowledge on principal radiologic features often found on a pneumoconiotic chest radiograph that characterize each of the above mentioned lung diseases related to occupational or environmental exposure to dust.