Research on Byssinosis: Where Do We Go from Here?

Michael S. Rohrbach


 
ABSTRACT

Byssinosis is an occupational lung disease caused by the inhalation of cotton mill dust. Workers with byssinosis experience dyspnea, wheezing, cough and chest tightness. Generally, these symptoms begin several hours after the onset of exposure to the dust and are most severe when the workers return to the mill after an absence of several days or weeks. Physiologically, the disease is characterized by a reversible bronchoconstriction and an acute pulmonary inflammatory response involving the accumulation of neutrophils, arachidonic acid metabolites and chemotactic factors in the airways.

In general, research into methods for the prevention and/or treatment of byssinosis can be divided into three levels of increasing complexity. The first approach requires only the knowledge that inhalation of the dust results in development of the disease in a portion of the exposed population. Thus, the simplest method for lower the incidence of byssinosis is to lower the level of airborne dust. This has, in fact, been done in the United States as a result of increasingly stringent standards for airborne dust in the mills. As a result of increasingly clean work environment in the mills, the incidence of byssinosis in American mills has decreased dramatically. While this approach is extremely important as a prophylactic method, it does not address either the question of the etiologic agent or agents present in the cotton mill dust that are responsible for the development of byssinosis or the question of the exact nature of the pathogenesis of the disease. Without this information lowering airborne dust levels may decrease the development of new cases of byssinosis, but it can not help us deal with workers who already have the disease.



Reprinted from Proceedings: 1989 Beltwide Cotton Dust Conference pp. 151 - 152
©National Cotton Council, Memphis TN

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Document last modified Sunday, Dec 6 1998