Lung Function and Occupational Dust Exposure

Abstract

ISEE-222 Objective: Legally binding limit values of dust exposure at the workplace in Austria are relatively high compared with those in neighboring countries. Material and Methods: Routine lung function data of 994 Austrian workers exposed to dust were examined. In Austria stone work is very common with high quartz exposure (501 workers). Welding fumes at industrial workplaces also cause a high dust exposure (379). All other workers (114) were exposed to various other or mixed sources of dust and served as the control group. Although enterprises are controlled for their compliance with the limit values, monitoring data for dust exposure were not available for all workers. But from visual inspection it was known that the exposure of most of the workers in the “quartz exposure group” was very high and likely approaching the limit values, followed by the group exposed to the welding fumes. No internal nonexposed control group was available. Therefore, lung function data were compared with the Austrian standard values that are based on routine testing of healthy volunteers. Results: For all parameters investigated (FVC, FEV1, and MEF50) the workers performed significantly poorer than the Austrian standard. The difference from the standard increased with increasing duration of the dust exposure. This increase was significant for the total group for MEF50 even after controlling for smoking (no smoking - light smoking <20 cigarettes/d - heavy smoking). When the 3 groups of exposure were compared, the quartz group had the poorest lung function values (P = 0.02 for MEF50) followed by the welding fumes group (n.s.). Smoking significantly reduced all 3 parameters with a significant interaction between strong smoking (compared with nonsmokers) and quartz exposure (compared with all other exposures). Conclusions: Current Austrian limit values are not protective against chronic damage of the respiratory system. The combined impact of cigarette smoke and high concentration of mineral dust (quartz) is especially dangerous.