The National Sheet Metal Worker Asbestos Disease Screening Program: radiologic findings. National Sheet Metal Examination Group.

Abstract

This report presents data gathered from a series of asbestos disease screening examinations of 9,605 United States sheet metal workers who were first employed in the trade at least 20 years before the examination. The overall prevalence of asbestos-related radiographic changes was 31.1%: 18.8% had pleural abnormalities alone, 6.6% had parenchymal abnormalities (International Labour Office (ILO) score of 1/0 or higher) alone, and 5.7% had both. Among those with 40 years or more since entering the trade, 41.5% had radiographic signs of asbestos-related disease, 24.2% pleural alone, 7.7% parenchymal alone, and 9.6% both pleural and parenchymal abnormalities. After controlling for several surrogates for asbestos exposure level, cigarette smoking was found to increase risk of parenchymal, and more modestly, pleural abnormalities. Each pack-year was associated with a 1% increased prevalence odds ratios for parenchymal abnormalities (ILO category 1 compared to category 0), and 0.4% increased prevalence odds ratios for pleural abnormalities. A history of shipyard employment also produced significantly increased prevalence odds ratios for each radiographic category. More that 90% of chest radiographs were classified by A or B readers; after adjustment for other risk factors, A readers were more likely to report parenchymal abnormalities of category 1, but not more likely to report category 2 or pleural abnormalities, than B readers.