Occupational hazards account for more than one in 10 persons with range of lung diseases

New Delhi, June 09, 2019
healthysoch : More than 1 in 10 people with a range of non-cancerous lung diseases may be sick as a result of inhaling vapors, gas, dust or fumes at work, according to a joint American Thoracic Society and the European Respiratory Society statement titled “The Occupational Burden of Nonmalignant Respiratory Diseases: An Official American Thoracic Society and European Respiratory Society Statement” published June 1, 2019 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The authors included a range of respiratory conditions, ranging from asthma and COPD to scarring fibrosis and selected infections. They did not study cancer of the lung and pleura, the membrane surrounding the lungs, because the occupational burden for those conditions, which can be substantial, has already been reported. Similarly, they did not include in their burden estimate asbestosis, silicosis and coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (black lung), because those conditions are entirely work-related… (ATS).