The mounting burden of chronic respiratory diseases Chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) are chronic diseases of the airways and other structures of the lungs. Major CRDs are asthma and respiratory allergies, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), occupational lung diseases, sleep apnoea syndrome and pulmonary hypertension. Globally, they affect 1 billion people and account for 7% of all ...

Pesticides have been widely used to control pest and pest-related diseases in agriculture, fishery, forestry and the food industry. In this review, we identify a number of respiratory symptoms and diseases that have been associated with occupational pesticide exposures. Impaired lung function has also been observed among people occupationally exposed to pesticides. There was strong evidence for...

Occupational asthma has become the most prevalent occupational lung disease in developed countries. At present, about 200 agents have been implicated in causing occupational asthma in the workplace. These agents can be divided into two categories by their mechanism of action: immunological and nonimmunological. Immunological causes can be further divided into those that induce asthma through an...

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 authors present a case of occupational lung damage from exposure to dust containing aluminium. The first detected objective pathological finding was that of dispersed micronodules in the lungs seen in a chest radiograph. The final diagnosis of pulmonary aluminosis was established after three years of gradual exclusion of other interstitial lung diseases. The diagnosis was supported by the o...

BACKGROUND The number of studies where non-malignant pulmonary diseases are evaluated after occupational arsenic exposure is very few. AIMS To investigate the effects of occupational arsenic exposure on the lung by high-resolution computed tomography and pulmonary function tests. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective cross-sectional study. METHODS In this study, 256 workers with suspected respirator...

A large number of agents in the workplace have been shown to give rise to occupational asthma. With the rapid introduction of new compounds into industries, it is likely that the prevalence of occupational asthma will continue to increase. This condition may well exceed pneumoconiosis as the most important cause of occupational lung disease. During the past two decades, there have been many stu...

Asbestos is a mineral-mined form the rocks, consisting in amosite (brown asbestos), crocidolite (blue asbestos) and÷or chrysotile (white asbestos) used in many industries. Researches about the exposure to asbestos dust and asbestosis related diseases started almost a century ago. The first case report of fatal asbestosis disease was published in 1906, in England, by Dr. Hubert Montague Murray. ...

Non-neoplastic asbestos-related respiratory diseases in practice are represented by asbestosis and pleural plaques. Clinical features and architectural tissue abnormalities of asbestosis do not differ from those of other causes of interstitial fibrosis which allows a confident diagnosis without a history of significant exposure to asbestos. But the relationship between non-neoplastic asbestos-r...

a 69-year-old woman was admitted to hospital 4 times from november 2007 to june 2009. the patient had silicosis complicated by broncholithiasis, esophagobronchial fistula, and relapsed tuberculosis. she had worked as a stone crusher for 3 years and was exposed to a large amount of quartz dust. barium esophagography, gastroesophageal endoscopy, and biopsy suggested esophageal-related chronic inf...