Occupational and environmental medicine
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To determine whether previous health experiences affect the prevalence of occupational lung disease in a semirural Botswanan community where there is a long history of labour recruitment to South African mines. ⋯ Former miners in Botswana have a high prevalence of previously unrecognised pneumoconiosis, indicative of high previous exposures to fibrogenic respirable dust. Their pneumoconiosis went unrecognised because they had no access to surveillance after employment. Inadequate radiographic surveillance or failure to act on results when employed or when leaving employment at the mines could have contributed to under recognition. Community based studies of former miners are essential to fully evaluate the effects of mining exposures. Our findings indicate a failure of established measures to prevent or identify pneumoconiosis while these miners were in employment and show that few of the social costs of occupational lung diseases are borne by mining companies through the compensation system.
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Smoke inhalation is a well known cause of airways injury in firefighting personnel. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether toxic effects of smoke on the respiratory tract can be detected by measuring Clara cell protein (CC16), a recently described serum marker of lung function. ⋯ Acute exposure to smoke results in a transient increase of CC16 in serum due most likely to an increased permeability of the bronchoalveolar/blood barrier. Serum CC16 seems potentially to be a new biomarker for the early detection of acute airways injury caused by smoke.