Aqueous extracts of cotton and other vegetable dusts cause contraction of the isolated ileum and tracheal muscle of the guinea-pig, and of isolated human bronchial muscle. The levels of this contractor activity place the dusts of cotton, flax, and jute in the order of the probable incidence of byssinosis occurring in the mills spinning these fibres. Extracts of cotton dust possess a histamine-l...

Workers from cotton mills were exposed to cotton dust during carding in an experimental cardroom. Cotton from different geographical locations with varying amounts of endotoxin were used. Exposure levels ranged from 0.6 to 3.6 mg dust/m3 (from a vertical elutriator) and from 0.1 to 8.0 micrograms/m3 of endotoxin. No relationship was found between the decrease in FEV1 over the workshift and the ...

Although byssinosis in jute mill workers remains controversial, studies in a few jute mills in West-Bengal, India, revealed typical byssinotic syndrome associated with acute changes in FEV1 on the first working day after rest. The present study on 148 jute mill workers is reported to confirm the occurrence of byssinosis in jute mill workers. Work related respiratory symptoms; acute and chronic ...

Merchant, J. A., Lumsden, J. C., Kilburn, K. H., Germino, V. H., Hamilton, J. D., Lynn, W. S., Byrd, H., and Baucom, D. (1973). British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 30, 237-247. Preprocessing cotton to prevent byssinosis. A fundamental approach of cleaning or deactivating cotton prior to manufacturing has long been advocated to prevent byssinosis, but no trial had been conducted to test the ...

Studies of ventilatory capacity change in small groups of employees during a shift in a cotton mill and in three cotton ginneries in Uganda, a sisal factory in Kenya, and a jute mill in England, have demonstrated that an effect is produced by the dust in the cotton mill and in a very dusty ginnery but not in two other less dusty ginneries. No significant effect was detected in the sisal factory...