Employment Status and Effect of Coal-Mine Dust Exposure

Details

• Personal Author:
  Attfield MD ; Henneberger, Paul K.
• Description:
  The purpose of this study was to determine if coal miners who quit the profession suffer greater declines in pulmonary function associated with coal mine dust exposure than miners who continue working or are laid off. The subjects were 1829 white male coal miners who were participants in the National Study of Coal Workers' Pneumoconiosis and had been tested at two surveys an average of 15.1 years apart. At the initial survey, all subjects were active coal miners with an average of 10.8 years mining. By the final survey, 379 (21 %) had quit for a variety of reasons (e.g. sickness, injury, another job) and the remaining 1450 were either still mining (938) or laid off (512). Least squares linear regression was used to model the average annual change in the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) from the initial to the final testing. The change in FEVI (milliliters/year, or ml/yr) associated with the mean inter-survey coal mine dust exposure (milligrams/meter3, or mg/m3) was negative for those who quit (-5.9 ml/yr per mg/m3, standard error (se=3.5, p=0.09) and slightly positive for those who kept on mining or were laid off (+2.6 ml/yr per mg/m3, se=1.8, p=0.15). The difference in effect was -8.5 ml/yr per mg/m3 (se=3.90, p=0.03). This finding suggests that miners who quit have a greater adverse response to coal mine dust exposure. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Biological Factors Coal Coal Mining Dust Environmental Monitoring Irritants Lung Lung Diseases Mining Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Respiratory System Respiratory Tract Diseases Risk Assessment Risk Factors Safety Workplace

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• Keywords:
  Biological-effects Biological-factors Biological-monitoring Biological-systems Coal-dust Coal-miners Coal-mining Coal-processing Coal-workers Coal-workers-pneumoconiosis Dust-exposure Dust-inhalation Exposure-assessment Exposure-levels Exposure-methods Occupational-exposure Occupational-hazards Occupational-health Respiratory-irritants Risk-factors Work-analysis Work-areas Work-environment Work-operations Work-practices Worker-health Workplace-studies

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• ISSN:
  0002-9262
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Abstract or Summary
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; West Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DRDS - Division of Respiratory Disease Studies
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  141
• Issue:
  11
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20035620
• Citation:
  Am J Epidemiol 1995 Jun; 141(11)(Suppl):S68
• Contact Point Address:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Respiratory Disease Studies, 1095 Willowdale Road, Morgantown, WV 26505
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1995
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  American Journal of Epidemiology. Abstracts of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, Snowbird, Utah, June 21-24, 1995
• Supplement:
  Suppl
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:ca62db0c68e230e2c8abdbe65514b80182870309ca6be8db97ad5a0522bee86967a15b14c93276ee133a778b8ad9a340a5640b5ad3f1c2e55f1d0c611222bb2f
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/187417/cdc_187417_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 305.38 KB ]