Why did NIOSH study industrial sand workers?
Industrial sand workers are exposed to silica, a dust thought to cause lung cancer, silicosis, kidney disease, and arthritis. NIOSH wanted to find out if industrial sand workers have an increased risk of these diseases (or possibly any others) when compared with the U. S. general public. Who was included in the NIOSH study? NIOSH studied 4,626 industrial sand workers from 18 plants in 11 different States. NIOSH based their results on the personnel records of these 4,626 former and current industrial sand workers. The records were collected during 1987-1988. How did NIOSH do the study? • We estimated silica exposure for each worker by using available silica exposure information based on each worker’s job and plant. • We collected smoking information for about 10% of the workers. We used the information to represent the smoking histories of the whole study group. • We collected death certificates for the workers who had died. • We compared the number of deaths from each cause among the w
