PULMONARY-FUNCTION STUDY IN FEMALE GRINDERS EXPOSED TO AGATE DUST

This paper reports a cross-sectional study of a non-smoking population of silica exposed female workers compared with a group of healthy non-exposed females. The exposed group is divided into cohorts according to the presence or absence of pneumoconiosis in either simple or complex form. The study revealed statistically significant difference in pulmonary function between each of the pneumoconiosis group and the controls and healthy exposed workers. Furthermore, there was statistically significant difference between the values of pulmonary function parameters of the healthy exposed group and the controls. The most important observation of the study is that almost equal decrement of pulmonary function values was observed in the diseased groups and in the healthy exposed group compared to the decrement seen between the latter group and the control group. VC and FVC showed a mean fall of 11.0 and 11.5% in the healthy exposed group as compared to those observed in the unexposed controls (p < 0.01 and p < 0.05) while in the pneumoconiosis group VC and FVC showed 16.9 and 18.2% decrease as compared with the values obtained in the healthy grinders (p < 0.01). Similarly FEV1 showed almost same decrease in the healthy (17.9%) and diseased (20.7%) exposed groups (p < 0.001). However, FEV0.75 and MVV parameters showed greater decrement (25.4 and 33.7%) in the pneumoconiosis group as compared to 15.7 and 18.5% observed in the healthy exposed workers. The important observation made in this study is that potential pulmonary debilitation may occur in pneumoconiosis before, or in the absence of, any radiologic findings. © 1990, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.