The presumption of a possibly elevated cancer risk in coalminers is based mainly on two hypotheses. Firstly most coalmine dusts include a relevant quartz dust fraction. With a view to the possibly causal relationship between pure quartz dust exposure/ silicosis and lung cancer excess risk it is of interest to investigate whether there exists an elevated lung cancer risk in coalminers. Secondly ...

Fine (PM(2.2)) and coarse (PM(2.2-10)) particles concurrently collected in urban (Hanoi) and rural (Lucnam) areas were analyzed for ionic and elemental compositions to provide input for PMF receptor modeling of emission sources in the Red River Delta (RRD), a key economic development region in Vietnam. Long-range transport (LRT) aerosol, coal fly ash from major coal-fired plants in RRD, and mar...

Exposure to coal mine dust and/or crystalline silica results in pneumoconiosis with initiation and progression of pulmonary fibrosis. This review presents characteristics of simple and complicated coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP) as well as pathologic indices of acute and chronic silicosis by summarizing results of in vitro, animal, and human investigations. These results support four basic m...

Among other cytokines, tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha is considered to play a key role in the development of mineral dust related fibrosis. Previously, we showed that ex-vivo release of TNF by peripheral blood monocytes is a marker for progression of coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP). Since soluble TNF receptors (sTNF-Rs) are believed to play an important regulatory role in systemic effect...

Beryllium is an extremely lightweight metal that occurs naturally in rocks, coal, soil, and volcanic dust. Commercially, bertrandite and beryl ore are mined for the recovery of beryllium. Because beryllium is one of the lightest metal and is very rigid, it has many uses in the electronics, aerospace, and defense industries. Beryllium is released into the atmosphere by windblown dust, volcanic p...

The relation between quantified emphysema and measured lung content of coal and silica was investigated in the lungs of 264 deceased underground coalworkers who had been exposed to mixed coal and silica dust. Lung specimens obtained at postmortem and inflated and fixed under standard conditions were used to quantify the extent of emphysema and then to measure the amount of coal and silica prese...