Grain Dust and Health. III. Environmental Factors

Excerpt

Previous investigations suggest that a number of respiratory disorders may result from exposure to grain dust (1-2). However, few if any attempts have been made to correlate either quantitative or qualitative measurements of dust exposure with respiratory disorders (3). In the absence of previous dose-effect relations this workshop attempted to catalogue the potential etiologic agents and assess their relative health importance.

Grain dust is a heterogeneous substance that may include particles from numerous cereal grains (wheat, barley, rye, oats, corn) and may contain a large number of contaminants including silica, fungi and their metabolites (anatoxin), bacterial endotoxins, insects, mites, mammalian