Pulmonary function, respiratory symptoms, and dust exposures among workers engaged in early manufacturing processes of tea: a cohort study

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Perng-Jy Tsai¹  How-Ran Guo²  Jui-Jung Chung³  Tzong-Shiun Shieh⁴  Yau-Chang Kuo⁵  Chung-Jing Wang⁶ 

[1] Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan;Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan;Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, Tainan, Taiwan;Sustainable Environment Research Center, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan;Medical Device Innovation Center, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan;Department of Family Medicine and Occupational Medicine Center, St. Martin De Porres Hospital, Chia-Yi, Taiwan;Department of Family Medicine and Occupational Medicine Center, St. Martin De Porres Hospital, Chia-Yi, Taiwan;Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan;Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan;Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, Tainan, Taiwan;Medical Administration Department, St. Martin De Porres Hospital, Chia-Yi, Taiwan;

关键词: Tea;    Occupational exposure;    Pulmonary function tests;    Signs and symptoms;    Respiratory;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-12-121

 received in 2011-05-25, accepted in 2012-02-13,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundTo evaluate pulmonary function and respiratory symptoms in workers engaged in the early manufacturing processes of tea and to identify the associated factors, we conducted a study in a tea production area in Taiwan.MethodsWe recruited tea workers who engaged in the early manufacturing process in the Mountain Ali area in Taiwan and a comparison group of local office workers who were matched for age, gender, and smoking habits. We performed questionnaire interviews, pulmonary function tests, skin prick tests, and measurement of specific IgE for tea on the participants and assessed tea dust exposures in the tea factories.ResultsThe 91 participating tea workers had higher prevalence of respiratory symptoms than the comparison group (32 participants). Among tea workers, ball-rolling workers had the highest prevalence of symptoms and the highest exposures of inhalable dusts. At baseline, tea workers had similar pulmonary functions as the comparison group, but compared to the other tea workers ball-rolling workers had a lower ratio of the 1-second forced expiratory volume to forced vital capacity (FEV1/FVC) and a lower maximal mid-expiratory flow rate expressed as% of the predicted value--MMF (%pred). A total of 58 tea workers participated in the on-site investigation and the cross-shift lung function measurements. We found ball-rolling yielded the highest inhalable dust level, panning yielded the highest respirable dust level, and withering yielded the lowest levels of both dusts. Ball-rolling also yielded the highest coarse fraction (defined as inhalable dusts minus respirable dusts), which represented exposures from nose to tracheobronchial tract. During the shift, we observed significant declines in pulmonary function, especially in ball-rolling workers. Multiple regressions showed that age, height, work tasks, coarse fraction, and number of months working in tea manufacturing each year were independent predictors of certain pulmonary function parameters in tea workers.ConclusionsTea workers engaged in early manufacturing processes of tea have higher prevalence of respiratory symptoms and pulmonary function impairment, which might be related to tea dust exposures, especially the coarse fraction.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Shieh et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. 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.