In 1992, 378 asbestos workers from nine asbestos industries in Korea were selected to evaluate the relationship between the work environmental and its impact on the workers' health status. Along with environmental asbestos fiber concentration,
several
medical indicators including subjective respiratory symptoms, pulmonary functions, and asbestos fibers and bodies in the workers' sputum were measured from the workers.
@ES The results were as follows;
@EN 1. Chrysotile asbestos was used exclusively for all 9 industries investigated. For the airborn asbestos fiber concentrations an average concentration of less than 1 fiber f/cc was found for 7 industries studied, while significantly higher
concentrations, averages of 1.48 f/cc (range 0.21-5.04) and 3.36 f/cc (range 2.40-7.15) were measured from 2 industries.
2. In the group of "less than 5 years of employment", such subjective respiratory symptoms as dyspnea, cough, sputum, and chest tightness were more reported than in the group of more than 5 years of employment.
3. Among workers, 3 suspected cases of reticular shadows were found by chest X-ray film. One case of these three suspected case was diagnosed as normal based on the results from the high resolution chest computed tomography (HRCT). No HRCT was
taken
from the other 2 cases.
4. All workers' mean of forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume at 1 second, FEV1.0/FVC, and peak expiratory folw rate (PEFR) were within normal ranges.
5. From 171 sputum samples collected, asbestos fiber was found in 156 samples (91.2%) and asbestos body was found in 35 samples (20.5%). No significant difference was found in asbestos fiber based on the length of employment. But asbestos body
was
significantly increased in the group of more than 10 years of employment compared with the group of less than 10 years of employment.
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