India being a developing nation is faced with traditional public health problems like communicable diseases, malnutrition, poor environmental sanitation and inadequate medical care. However, globalization and rapid industrial growth in the last few years has resulted in emergence of occupational health related issues. Agriculture (cultivators i.e. land owners + agriculture labourers) is the mai...

A homogeneous batch of dew retted hackled flax was divided into two portions. One was untreated and the other was steamed for 45 minutes at 125 degrees C in three pressure/vacuum cycles in an autoclave. Dust was collected when the two flaxes were separately processed by industrial doubler and stapler machines. From untreated flax 7.2 g of dust was collected per kilogram of flax after two proces...

The problem of byssinosis has plagued cotton textile mills for hundreds of years, and it is still a problem today. With the regulations on airborne raw cotton dust set by OSHA and the ACGIH, research regarding the measurement of cotton dust in lint fiber is a necessity. A procedure known as the mass concentration particle size distribution (MCPSD) technique, developed at Texas A&M University, w...

HISTOCOMPATIBILITY (HLA) typing is primarily used to match kidney donors with awaiting recipients. However many studies have been carried out to determine the frequency of the HLA antigens in various diseases. In this laboratory we have been requested to carry out such studies in several diseases, e.g. diabetes, ankylosing spondylitis, farmer's lung, Plummer-Vinson stricture and flax byssinosis...

Louis Pasteur described the first measurements of airborne microorganisms in 1861. A century later, the inhalation of spores from thermophilic microorganisms was shown to induce attacks of farmers' lung in patients with this disease, while endotoxins originating from Gram-negative bacteria were identified as causal agents for byssinosis in cotton workers. Further epidemiological and toxicologic...

Tannin, isolated from cotton bracts, inhibits chloride secretion in airway epithelium. In bovine tracheal epithelial cells, tannin (25 μg/ml) blunted isoproterenol (Iso)-stimulated adenosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (cAMP) accumulation. Inhibition was time and dose dependent, with 52 ± 5% (mean ± SE, n = 6) inhibition at 60 min and 82 ± 9% ( n = 3) inhibition at 8 h. Inhibition was reversible...