Accepted 12 December 1995 Abstract Objectives-To study the role of dust exposure on incidence of respiratory symptoms and decline of lung function in young coal miners. Methods-The loss of lung function (forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV,), forced expiratory flow (MEF), carbon monoxide transfer factor (TLCO)) with time and the incidence of respiratory symp...

Several chronic inhalation bioassays of poorly soluble, nonfibrous particles have resulted in an increased incidence of lung tumors in rats, no increase in lung tumors in Syrian hamsters, and inconsistent results in mice. These results have raised concerns that rats may be more prone than other species to develop persistent pulmonary epithelial hyperplasia, metaplasia, and tumors in response to...

OBJECTIVES To study the role of dust exposure on incidence of respiratory symptoms and decline of lung function in young coal miners. METHODS The loss of lung function (forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1), forced expiratory flow (MEF), carbon monoxide transfer factor (TLCO)) with time and the incidence of respiratory symptoms in 909 Sardinian coal miners...

Because industrial workers in dusty or smoky environments seemed to experience no discomfort if they consumed the sugar cane product jaggery, experimental studies were undertaken to observe the effects of jaggery on dust-exposed rats. Rats with and without a single intratracheal instillation of coal dust (50 mg/rat) were orally gavaged with jaggery (0.5 g/rat, 5 days/week for 90 days). The enha...

Respiratory chronic airway disorders and early damage of pulmonary system predict by Spirometry. Occupational exposures to coal dust affect the different systems of the body. The present study has focused on the coal workers who are continuously exposed to air pollutants such as coal dust. Study group of 170 male workers working in coal mines for more than ten years, consists of 66 non-alcoholi...

A monitoring method for diesel particulate matter was published as Method 5040 by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Organic and elemental carbon are determined by the method, but elemental carbon (EC) is a better exposure measure. The US Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) proposed use of NIOSH 5040 for compliance determinations in metal and nonmetal mi...

By the mid-19th century about 200,000 miners were employed in a UK coal mining industry still growing with the advances of the Industrial Revolution. Coal miners were long known to suffer poor health but the link to inhaling dust in the mines had not been made. In 1813 George Pearson was the first to suggest that darkening of lungs seen in normal individuals as they aged was caused by inhaled s...

Rats were exposed by inhalation to coal mine dust, titanium dioxide, or quartz. The magnitude of the consequent inflammatory response was assessed by counting numbers and types of leukocytes in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. The magnitude of the inflammatory response reflected the toxicity of the dusts, with quartz eliciting the greatest recruitment of inflammatory leukocytes, coal mine dust...

Whenever coal is stockpiled and, particularly, when it is transported, dumped or otherwise handled, there is the potential for release of small particles (i.e. dust) of coal in significant quantities. The range of sizes of these particles is considerable; visible coal dust (i.e. as a black cloud) is one extreme of the possible range of particle dimensions but within any such dust cloud there wi...

Nationalisation of the coal industry by the 1945 Labour Government provided Britain with a unique opportunity for preventing the disablement of coal miners. At that time several thousand miners received disability benefits each year for pneumoconiosis in South Wales alone, and the Medical Research Council had started an important series of investigations into the relationships between dust expo...