Mortality of flax workers.

Mortality of employees of two cotton mills in North Carolina.

Carl Ortmeyer, Ph.D. A lthough respiratory morbidity associated with exposure to cotton dust in the primary textile industry has been extensively studied and documented, relatively little research has been directed toward assessment of morbidity and mortality of former cotton textile workers. There are frequent anecdotal references to early retirement and death in the early literature on cotton...

Epidemiological investigation of the role of family susceptibility and occupational and family histories in the development of byssinosis among workers exposed to flax dust.

Epidemiological investigation of 475 workers exposed to dust in flax processing has shown that family susceptibility has a decisive role in the development of byssinosis in those workers. Workers whose fathers had occupational history of exposure to flax dust were more resistant to the development of the disease than those whose fathers had no such history. Such tolerance was much higher in wor...

Respiratory disability in ex-flax workers.

Acute respiratory effects occur in a high proportion of subjects exposed to textile dusts. The extent to which these lead to permanent respiratory symptoms and loss of lung function is unknown. A survey of random population samples was therefore conducted in ten towns in Northern Ireland in which flax processing had been a major source of employment. The MRC questionnaire on respiratory symptom...

Respiratory changes in two groups of flax workers with different exposure pattern.

Dust exposure in manual flax processing in Egypt.

Manual flax processing originated in Egypt in 2 000 BC. In the present study a representative sample of the workers involved in this trade, where flax is processed in small workshops or homes, was examined, and their dust exposure was evaluated. The study showed that workers handling and processing flax are exposed to high concentrations of dust; the levels of dust at hackling and combing are c...