Risk factors for respiratory work disability in a cohort of pulp mill workers exposed to irritant gases

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Eva Andersson¹  Jeong-Lim Kim¹  Kjell Torén¹  Nicola Murgia² 

[1] Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden;Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden;Section of Occupational Medicine, Respiratory Diseases and Toxicology, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy;

关键词: Asthma;    Chronic Bronchitis;    Work Ability;    Environmental Tobacco Smoke;    Work Disability;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-11-689

 received in 2011-02-24, accepted in 2011-09-06,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe association between chronic respiratory diseases and work disability has been demonstrated a number of times over the past 20 years, but still little is known about work disability in occupational cohorts of workers exposed to respiratory irritants. This study investigated job or task changes due to respiratory problems as an indicator of work disability in pulp mill workers occupationally exposed to irritants.MethodsData about respiratory symptoms and disease diagnoses, socio-demographic variables, occupational exposures, gassing episodes, and reported work changes due to respiratory problems were collected using a questionnaire answered by 3226 pulp mill workers. Information about work history and departments was obtained from personnel files. Incidence and hazard ratios for respiratory work disability were calculated with 95% confidence intervals (CI).ResultsThe incidence of respiratory work disability among these pulp mill workers was 1.6/1000 person-years. The hazard ratios for respiratory work disability were increased for workers reporting gassings (HR 5.3, 95% CI 2.7-10.5) and for those reporting physician-diagnosed asthma, chronic bronchitis, and chronic rhinitis, when analyzed in the same model.ConclusionsThis cohort study of pulp mill workers found that irritant peak exposure during gassing episodes was a strong predictor of changing work due to respiratory problems, even after adjustment for asthma, chronic bronchitis, and chronic rhinitis.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Murgia et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.