PULMONARY-FUNCTION IN RELATION TO TOTAL DUST EXPOSURE AT A BAUXITE REFINERY AND ALUMINA-BASED CHEMICAL-PRODUCTS PLANT

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Abstract
A cross-sectional study of 1,142 male employees at the Arkansas Operations of a large aluminum production company examined the effect on pulmonary function of chronic exposure to total dust produced in the mining and refining of bauxite and the production of alumina chemicals. Never smokers, ex-smokers, and current smokers were analyzed separately. Among never smokers, a pattern of decreasing FEV1 was observed in relation to increasing duration and cumulative total dust exposure. Among never smokers with cumulative total dust exposures of .gtoreq. 100 mg/m3 yr and .gtoreq. 20 yr of exposure, there was a mean reduction from the predicted FEV1 of 0.29 to 0.39 L, in addition to a 3- to 4-fold excess of observed/expected numbers of subjects with FEV1 < 80% of predicted. These results were observed relative to an external and an internal comparison group. Among current smokers, the deviations from predicted and the excess numbers of subjects with FEV1 < 80% of predicted were larger in all exposure groups than for the never smokers. However, the quality of the smoking data was inadequate to allow separation of the effects of smoking and dust exposure.

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