A cohort mortality study of lung cancer in 7088 copper miners was made from 1 January 1969 to 31 December 1988. There was an excess of deaths from lung cancer in the copper miners. The standardised mortality ratio (SMR) was 147 (p < 0.01). The SMR increased with calendar period. There was a higher risk of deaths from lung cancer in the miners employed in the 1950s. Age at the start of exposure ...

A body of international and Australian research demonstrates connections between certain types of occupations and elevated suicide rates, relative to suicide rates observed in other occupations or within the general population. In Australia, it has been suggested that miners face a heightened risk of suicide relative to the population overall, but there is very little empirical data available t...

Epidemiological studies have shown an excessive incidence of lung cancer in miners with exposure to radon daughters. The various risk estimates have ranged from six to 47 excess cases per 10(6) person years and working level month, but the effect of smoking has not been fully evaluated. The present study, among a group of iron ore miners, is an attempt to obtain quantitative information about t...

An excess of mortality from stomach cancer has been found in Ontario gold miners (observed (obs) 104, standardised mortality ratio (SMR) 152, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 125-185) and no excess of stomach cancer could be detected in other miners in Ontario (obs 74, SMR 102, 95% CI 80-128). The excess of stomach cancer appeared five to 19 years after the miners began gold mining in Ontario. ...

BACKGROUND Guyana had an estimated HIVprevalence of 1.5% among pregnant women in 2006 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.1-1.9). However, a survey of miners in one mine found a 6.5% HIV prevalence in 2002. To determine whether Guyanese miners are at high risk for HIV infection we conducted a HIV and syphilis prevalence survey of miners in several mines. METHODS Adult male consenting miners in ...

BACKGROUND Artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the world's largest anthropogenic source of mercury emission. Gold miners are highly exposed to metallic mercury and suffer occupational mercury intoxication. The global disease burden as a result of this exposure is largely unknown because the informal character of ASGM restricts the availability of reliable data. OBJECTIVE To estimate t...

Research published in this journal and elsewhere has demonstrated an increased risk of pneumoconiosis and more recently chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among coal miners. Despite this extensive research base, many puzzles remain such as the deficit of lung cancer reported in many studies of coal miners. These findings are surprising since in addition to coal dust, miners are exposed to ot...

BACKGROUND Coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP) is a preventable, but not fully curable occupational lung disease. More and more coal miners are likely to be at risk of developing CWP owing to an increase in coal production and utilization, especially in developing countries. Coal miners with different occupational categories and durations of dust exposure may be at different levels of risk for C...