Silicosis historical perspective
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Overview
- Hippocrates described a condition of “breathlessness” in miners, and in 1690, Lohneiss noted that when “the dust and stones fall upon the lungs, the men have lung disease,breathe with difficulty.”1 Bernardo Ramazzini studied so-called “miners’ phthisis,” and other trades of the day wherein workers inhaled substantial amounts of dusts. These dust-related afflictions have been known by various names, including “miners’ phthisis,” “dust consumption,” “mason’s disease,” “grinders’ asthma,” “potters’ rot,” and “stonecutters’ disease.”1 These problems are now collectively referred to as silicosis.[1]
- Since antiquity, observers had recognized that workers developed serious breathing problems when they inhaled the dust of certain rocks and minerals. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, doctors and laymen alike had accepted dust as a source of phthisis or, more commonly, consumption, chronic lung conditions that affected broad cross-sections of western European and American society. For the previous two centuries, this condition was the single greatest cause of death in Europe and America.
Silicosis Historical Perspective
- The term Silicosis was first introduced by Visconti 1870, derived from the Latin word silex, or flint.
- Mining, tunneling, sand stone industry, stone quarrying and dressing, iron and steel foundries and flint crushing are the occupations most closely related to the hazards of silica exposure.
Silicosis Epidemics
- In certain places in the world, an age-old scenario is being repeated. In the 16th century Agricola wrote of mines in the Carpathian mountains in Europe: "women are found to have married seven husbands, all of whom this terrible consumption (silico-tuberculosis) has carried off to a premature death". Only a few years ago certain villages in Northern Thailand were called "villages of widows" because of the large number of pestle-and-mortar-making workers who died early from silicosis<ref>"Silicosis".</ref
- During 1991 to 1995, China recorded more than 500 000 cases of silicosis, with around 6 000 new cases and more than 24 000 deaths occurring each year mostly among older workers.
- In Vietnam the cumulative number of diagnosed cases has now reached 9 000. They constitute 90% of all cases of occupationally compensated diseases.
- In India, a prevalence of 55% was found in one group of workers, many of them very young, engaged in the quarrying of shale sedimentary rock and subsequent work in small, poorly ventilated sheds. Studies on silicotic pencil workers in Central India demonstrated high mortality rates; the mean age at death was 35 years and the mean duration of the exposure was 12 years.
- In Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais alone more than 4 500 workers have been diagnosed with silicosis. In drought-affected regions in the north-east of the country the hand-digging of wells through layers of rock with very high quartz content (97%), an activity that generates great quantities of dust in confined spaces, resulted in a prevalence of 26% of silicosis, with many cases of accelerated forms. The state of Rio de Janeiro banned sandblasting after a quarter of shipyard workers were found to have silicosis.
- In the USA, it is estimated that more than one million workers are occupationally exposed to free crystalline silica dusts (more than 100 000 of these workers are sandblasters), of whom some 59 000 will eventually develop silicosis. It is reported that each year in the USA about 300 people die from it, but the true number is not known.
- In Quebec, Canada, in the years 1988-1994, 40 newly diagnosed workers were compensated (12 were less than 40 years old).
- The Colombian Government estimates that 1.8 million workers in the country are at risk of developing the disease.
References
- ↑ Karkhanis VS, Joshi JM (2013). "Pneumoconioses". Indian J Chest Dis Allied Sci. 55 (1): 25–34. PMID 23798087.