Pneumoconiosis

Pneumoconiosis
Specialty	Pulmonology

Pneumoconiosis is an occupational lung disease and a restrictive lung disease caused by the inhalation of dust, often in mines.

Types

Depending upon the type of dust, the disease is given different names:

• Coalworker's pneumoconiosis (also known as miner's lung, black lung or anthracosis) - coal, carbon
• Asbestosis - asbestos
• Silicosis (also known as "grinder's disease" or Potter's rot) - silica
• Bauxite fibrosis - bauxite
• Berylliosis - beryllium
• Siderosis - iron
• Byssinosis - cotton
• Silicosiderosis - mixed dust containing silica and iron
• Labrador lung (found in miners in Labrador, Canada) - mixed dust containing iron, silica and anthophyllite, a type of asbestos

Diagnosis

Positive indications on patient assessment:

• Shortness of breath
• Chest X-ray may show a characteristic patchy, subpleural, bibasilar interstitial infiltrates or small cystic radiolucencies called honeycombing.

Pneumoconiosis in combination with multiple pulmonary rheumatoid nodules in rheumatoid arthritis patients is known as Caplan's syndrome.

Other work-related lung diseases

• Popcorn workers' lung disease - diacetyl emissions and airborne dust from butter flavorings used in microwave popcorn production

Popular culture references

• In the classic British film Brief Encounter (1945), derived from a Noël Coward play, housewife Laura (Celia Johnson) and physician Alec (Trevor Howard) begin an affair. She is desperately mesmerized in a train station lounge by his evocation of his passion for pneumoconioses:

Laura: “You were saying about the coal mines…”

Alec: “Oh yes, the inhalation of coal dust…That’s one specific form of the disease. It’s called anthracosis.”

Laura [Tenderly]: “What are the others?”

Alec: “Chalicosis. That comes from metal dust. Steel works, you know…”

Laura [Breathlessly]: “Yes, of course… Steel works…”

Alec: “And silicosis… That’s stone dust… Gold mines…”

Laura [Almost swooning]: “I see…”

Bell rings

Laura: “There’s your train.”

Alec: “Yes.”

Laura: “You mustn’t miss it.”

Alec: “No.”

• In the 1995 British film Brassed Off, the band leader (Pete Postlethwaite) in a small coal-mining town is hospitalized with pneumoconiosis.
• A 2006 documentary film by Shane Roberts features interviews with miners suffering from the disease and footage shot inside the mine
• An episode of 1000 Ways to Die featured an incident where two kitchen workers succumb to pneumoconiosis from playing in cocoa powder.
• In the movie Zoolander, Ben Stiller's character, Derek Zoolander, worries that he has caught the "black lung".
• In the widely acclaimed Puzzle/Shooter game "Portal 2", former CEO and founder of Aperture Science Laboratories, Cave Johnson, purportedly contracted and died of lunar pneumoconiosis after prolonged exposure to the moon rocks he was using in teleportation technology research.
• Mentioned in the film "Four Wives."
• "30 Days" Working in a Coal Mine (TV episode 2008) by Morgan Spurlock

See also

• Coalworker's pneumoconiosis
• Black Lung Benefits Act of 1973
• Chalicosis
• Philip D'Arcy Hart

References

• A Cochrane and M Blythe (1989) "One Man's Medicine, an autobiography of Professor Archie Cochrane". London, BMJ Books. (Paperback edition, 2009, by Cardiff University Publications (available from the Cochrane Library, Cardiff).

External links

• NIOSH Safety and Health Topic: Pneumoconioses
• Black Lung Benefits Act - U.S. Department of Labor
• Coal Workers' Pneumoconiosis - The Merck Manuals: Online Medical Library
• Black Lung - United Mine Workers of America
• Black Lung - U.S. Department of Labor Mine Safety and Health Administration
• A Conversation about Mining and Black Lung Disease
• Flavorings-Related Lung Disease
• The Institute of Occupational Medicine and its research into pneumocomiosis
• Pneumoconiosis in coalminers and exposure to dust of variable quartz content by BG Miller and AG Kinnear Institute of Occupational Medicine Research Report TM/88/17
• Work Safely With Silica