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IN 1952 at a meeting of the Thoracic Society of Great Britain, attention was first drawn to an association in coal miners in South Wales of rheumatoid arthritis and certain unusual radiological appearances in chest radiograms (Caplan 1953). Epidemiological studies of rheumatoid arthritis in a community of coal miners in South Wales were carried out by the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit to investigate this syndrome (Miall et al., 1953; Miall, 1955). The investigations confirmed the observation that a particular type of radiological appearance in the chest X-ray films of coal miners is closely associated with the presence of rheumatoid disease. Examples of the syndrome have now been observed in coal workers in other parts of Great Britain and in other European countries

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