Occupational illnesses acute health effects

Humans can be exposed to POPs through diet, occupational exposures (for example, farmworkers may be exposed to POPs through pesticides), industrial accidents and the environment (including indoor exposure). Exposure to POPs, either acute or chronic, can be associated with a wide range of adverse health effects, including illness and death (L. Ritter et al., 1995). Laboratory animal studies and wildlife studies have associated POPs with endocrine disruption, reproductive and immune dysfunction, neurobehavioral disorders and cancer. More recently, some POPs have also been connected to reduced immunity in infants and children and a concomitant increase in infections. Other studies have linked POPS concentrations in humans with developmental abnormalities, neurobehavioral impairment and cancer and tumor induction or promotion.4... 

It is considered desirable to keep workplace exposure to pesticides as low as practical regardless of the current knowledge of their acute and chronic toxicity. All too often pesticides which were considered to be of negligible toxicity are later found to have a potential for causing adverse health effects following a sufficient period of exposure to an adequate dose. DBCP and nitrophen are good examples of this type of problem. We also gather and analyze detailed information on more than 2,000 illness reports per year from physicians who describe possible occupational exposures to specific pesticides. We also obtain or make detailed workplace measurements of the levels of pesticides to which workers may be exposed. 

In addition to chloracne, acute or chronic health effects, or both, may occur. Acute effects are noticed soon after heavy exposure to TCDD, as after the explosions ( ). In such cases, workers usually become ill within 1 week. If workers are continually exposed to lower levels of TCDD, however, signs of illness may not occur for several months. Under such circumstances, the overriding sign is the chloracne. Although in Nitro, West Virginia exposure and occupational illness occurred as early as 1947, it was not until 1957 that TCDD was identified as the culprit (19). 

Health hazards also present a problan in that some can cause acute effects, while others can lead to chronic disease at some time much later. This chapter cannot cover all the potential causes and risks of occupational illness, but it does review some of the most common health-related risks in the workplace. 

Chapter 10—Sick Occupational Illnesses—Occupational illnesses often do not occur in real time, but have a latency period before their manifestation. When illnesses arise where symptoms occur immediately, the acute results can often follow a cause scenario similar to that of an injury. But, when exposures to chemicals, radiation, noise, biological entities, or environmental extremes transpire, effects are often not immediate. The approach to prevention has to be addressed before the event. In this chapter, illnesses and their preventive approaches will be addressed by following a normal industrial hygiene approach to head off possible occupationally related illnesses. The emphasis is on identifying the potential hazards to health and how to best preclude them or protect your workforce from exposure. 

The dangerous properties of acute toxicity, irritation, corrosivity, sensitisation, repeated-dose toxicity and CMR are evaluated in terms of their potential toxic effects to workers, consumers and man exposed indirectly via the environment, based on the use for each stage in the lifecycle of the substance from which exposure can occur. Risk assessment is also required if there are reasonable grounds for concern for potential hazardous properties, e.g., from positive in vitro mutagenicity tests or structural alerts. The risk assessment involves comparing the estimated occupational or consumer exposure levels with the exposure levels at which no adverse effects are anticipated. This may be a quantitative risk assessment, based on the ratio between the two values, or a qualitative evaluation. The principles of human health risk assessment are covered in detail by Illing (a.30) and more briefly in Chapter 7 of (73). 

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