Fibrous Glass Workers

Our plain-English summary of Fibrous Glass Workers, by H.M.D. Utidjian (1969).

The study

• Author: H.M.D. Utidjian
• Published: IHF Statistical Studies of Health (1969)
• Type of article: Conference paper
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This document is the text of a talk by the author, given at a Fibrous Dust Seminar sponsored by the Industrial Hygiene Foundation (I.H.F.). It describes a cross-sectional study of male employees at the O.C.F. plant in Newark, Ohio, exposed to airborne dust from making and processing fibrous glass. The subject is fibrous glass, not asbestos. Plant management sorted employees into lowest, intermediate and highest estimated exposure groups. These were crossed with three age groups: under 30, 30 to 49, and 50 and over. A sample of 261 was planned and 232 were examined. Each completed a questionnaire adapted from the British M.R.C. bronchitis questionnaire and had spirometry, of which only untimed vital capacity was reported. Recent chest X-rays were also reviewed. The author reported that, so far, no clear relationships had emerged between degree of exposure and any disease measure studied. Advancing age alone appeared related to chest illness, symptoms and reduced ventilatory capacity. The author noted that the exposure estimates were approximate and that smoking-history figures were unreliable. The document also contains a separate talk by the author on a bleach-digestion method for extracting ferruginous bodies from autopsy lungs.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Cross-sectional study using a stratified random sample (age by exposure groups); questionnaire, spirometry and chest X-rays. Presented as a seminar talk.
• Who was studied: Male employees of the O.C.F. plant at Newark, Ohio. A sample of 261 was planned across 9 age-by-exposure groups. 232 were investigated during field trips in August, September and October.
• Exposure: Airborne dust from the manufacture and processing of fibrous glass. Employees were classified by plant management into highest, intermediate and lowest exposure categories, based on estimates of time-integrated exposure to process dust.
• Main results:
  • So far in the survey, no clear relationships had emerged between degree of exposure, as defined, and any of the disease measures studied, among the 232 employees examined.
  • Advancing age alone appeared related to chest illness, symptoms and impairment of ventilatory capacity.
  • For significant cough, there was a fairly consistent rise with age but little evidence of a rise with increasing exposure, except in the 30 to 49 age column.
  • Only total (untimed) vital capacity was presented from the spirometry.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that no clear relationship between exposure and respiratory disease measures had emerged so far. The author expected the survey to be followed by a more detailed investigation in smaller groups, including diffusion studies in the lowest- and highest-exposure halves of the oldest age group.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • Answers to subjective questions were less reliable than answers to objective ones, and very little reliance could be placed on numerical estimates in smoking histories.
  • Exposure categories were only approximate estimates, so the survey aimed only to discern gross relationships.
  • Not all selected employees could be examined (232 of 261), and the greatest shortfall was in the youngest age group.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Industrial Hygiene, Spirometry, Chest X-Ray, Ferruginous body, Autopsy.

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