Evaluation of the coil planet centrifuge method as a screening test in the health examination system to detect vibration hazards among forest workers.

The coil planet centrifuge (CPC) test, a sensitive method for detecting minute changes in osmotic fragility of red blood cells (RBC), was applied to 788 forest workers in parallel with the conventional health examination for vibration hazards. Although the RBC of the examinees with or suspected of vibration hazards tend to be osmotically more resistant than the RBC of healthy subjects when evaluated on a group basis, comparison of the results between the CPC test and the vibration hazard examination disclosed that the changes are not remarkable enough to identify the affected individuals from the mass of the non-affected. Thus, the validity of the CPC test as a screening measure to detect the earliest signs of vibration hazards appears to be rather limited, even though this conclusion does not necessarily rule out the possibility that positive changes in CPC findings might be observed in severe cases of vibration hazards.