1973). British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 30, 259-265. Chest symptoms and farmer's lung: a community survey.Farmer's lung is one of the commonest causes of extrinsic allergic alveolitis, but there have been few studies of representative samples of farmers. A survey was carried out in Devon among 91 farmers and their families in order to estimate the prevalence of respiratory symptoms and of positive precipitin reactions to thermophilic fungi. Answers to a questionnaire about respiratory symptoms and smoking habits revealed among the men a prevalence of symptoms comparable with that found in other surveys of agricultural populations in the United Kingdom but with a lower proportion of smokers. A positive answer to a question about attacks of breathlessness associated with fever or shivering appeared to differentiate people suffering from farmer's lung. Twenty-three per cent of the population had precipitins to Micropoly3pora faeni and two of these individuals also had precipitins to other fungi. There were statistically significant differences in the proportions of positive precipitin tests found in smokers, ex-smokers, and non-smokers. Six known cases of farmer's lung were included in the sample and all had positive precipitins.

. (1975). British Journal ofIndustrial Medicine, 32,[228][229][230][231][232][233][234] Chest symptoms in farming communities with special reference to farmer's lung. Surveys were carried out on random samples of the farming population in Devon and Wales in order to estimate the prevalence of respiratory symptoms and of positive precipitin reactions to thermophilic fungi. Bronchitis, as defined, was common among the Welsh hill farmers, and the proportion of positive serological tests was higher in both the areas surveyed in Wales as compared with Devon. All three surveys confirmed a previous finding that the proportion of positive precipitin tests was higher among non-smokers than smokers. Although the numbers were small there was some indication that measurement of peak expiratory flow showed different relationships with age in non-smokers according to the presence or absence of positive precipitin tests. The difficulty of determining prevalence rates for farmer's lung is discussed, but the results suggest a rate not dissimilar to those found in two areas of Scotland which were more than 20 times higher than any figure previously reported in Britain.During the winters 1970/71 and 1971/72, surveys of four representative farming populations were made.

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