The concentration of airborne microbes, their endotoxins and the prevalence of byssinotic symptoms among workers were measured in the cardrooms of seven cotton spinning, a wool spinning and two cotton waste mills and in a dusty workroom of a group of five willowing mills, a tea-packing plant and a pipe tobacco factory. The concentration of microbes cultured on endoagar plates were found to correlate with byssinosis prevalence (r greater than 0.95, P less than 0.001). The concentration of nutrient agar microbes correlated with prevalence less well (r greater than 0.77, P less than 0.01) and that of fungi and endotoxins not at all.

Changes in ventilatory capacity during the work shift were studied in workers exposed to tea dust in two tea-packing plants, wood dust in two furniture factories, and virtually no dust in an inoperational power station. The FEV, and FVC in workers exposed to dust were found to decline during the work shift by a small but significant volume. The MMFR, Vmax 50% and Vmax 75%were too variable to display any trend. No dose-response relationship could be discerned between the fall in workers' ventilatory capacity and the concentration of airborne dust or microbes to which they were exposed. Bronchodilators could reverse the fall in FEV1.Many non-allergenic dusts of vegetable or animal origin have been shown to affect acutely the ventilatory capacity of exposed workers. McKerrow et alt found that dust in cotton mills suppressed the "indirect maximum breathing capacity" (IMBC) and increased airway resistance during the working day. These findings were later confirmed2 3 and others observed that the FEVo.75, FEV1, or forced vital capacity (FVC) were similarly affected in workers exposed to flax dusts,45 cotton dust,6 7 hemp dust,8 9 and jute dust.10 11 These changes were at one time considered to be byssinotic symptoms even though they occurred also in non-byssinotic subjects. In the past decade, however, workers' FEV1 and FVC in particular were found to decline on exposure to dusts in industries where byssinosis does not occur, such as in coal-mines,12 and in wool13 and tobacco processing factories.14 Similar changes tended to occur in other, occasionally more sensitive but at the same time less reproducible, indices of ventilatory function, such as the maximum midexpiratory flow rate (MMFR), peak-flow (PF), and flow volume curves (Vmax 25 %, Vmax 500%, and Vmax 75 %). Recently, Anderson et al15 showed that the FEV1 fell by a small but significant amount in people who had been rebreathing very high concentrations (2-25 mg/m3) of inert carbon-coated plastic particles for several hours in an exposure chamber.Evidence suggests that the decline in ventilatory

We have collected data on the cancer deaths of children and adolescents 0-19 yr old living in a residential area near 3 large petroleum and petrochemical complexes in and near Kaohsiung city (petrochemical industrial districts, PIDs) in the period of 1971-1990 and compared these with the cancer deaths of children and adolescents 0-19 yr old among the entire population of Taiwan (national reference) and among the residents of 26 administrative districts, comprising all of Kaohsiung city and Kaohsiung county (local reference), except for 8 sparsely populated, rural districts. Having scrutinized all cancer death certificates, we have identified various statistically significant excess deaths, as compared with the national and local reference, due to cancers at all sites. Cancer of the bone, brain, and bladder in boys and girls 0-9 yr and 10-19 yr of age in the 1981-1990 decade that followed the establishment of petrochemical production in the PIDs was studied. However, excess cancer deaths seemed to have clustered in the 10-19 yr age group, who had been potentially exposed to the petrochemical pollutants for the longest period of time from the youngest age. Almost all bone, brain, and bladder cancer deaths registered were within 3 km of the 3 complexes. Bone and brain cancers in particular occurred in girls in the PIDs more frequently than in boys, even though these are believed to occur more in males than females elsewhere.

No abstract

One hundred and sixty two people working in various departments of cotton spinning and weaving mills measured and recorded their own peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) at two hourly intervals during Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday of the same work week, from waking in the morning throughout the day until going to bed and a last time the following morning after waking. The circadian rhythm in PEFR was computed by the Halberg program. The mean amplitude of the rhythm in the group was found to be 3 3% and the acrophase fell approximately in the middle of the waking hours. Older workers and those claiming to suffer from symptoms of chronic bronchitis were found to have an amplitude significantly higher (4.1% and 3-9% respectively) than their younger or symptom free counterparts (2.6% and 2*9% respectively; p < 0.03).