Health effects of working in pulp and paper mills: Exposure, obstructive airways diseases, hypersensitivity reactions, and cardiovascular diseases

Cohort mortality study of Swedish pulp and paper mill workers—nonmalignant diseases

“…Shift work, reduced sulfur compounds, dust, and small particles have been proposed as being the cause (1,3,4,6). Other factors that may affect ischemic heart disease are occupational noise, psychosocial factors, and smoking.…”

“…The main occupational exposures in pulping have been wood dust, terpenes, and bleachery chemicals. In sulfate pulping there is also exposure to hydrogen sulfide and other reduced sulfur compounds, and in sulfite pulping there is exposure to sulfur dioxide (1). In paper production, paper dust and different additives are the major exposures.…”

“…There have been reports of increased mortality due to ischemic heart Andersson et al disease among pulp and paper mill workers (1,(3)(4)(5), but myocardial infarction, specifically, has rarely been studied. Mill workers exposed to sulfur dioxide have been reported to have increased mortality from nonmalignant respiratory diseases and asthma (6,7), and also from lung cancer (8).…”

Environmental and genetic risk factors and gene-environment interactions in the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive lung disease.

“…The longest cohort study of cotton workers demonstrated an excess longitudinal decline of FEVI, compared to silk workers, most pronounced in the early years of exposure; loss of pulmonary function was independent of estimated exposure to inhaled endotoxin (65). Other workplace biologic dusts implicated in the development of chronic airflow obstruction include cork (67), wood (68), sugar (69), and paper dusts (70).…”

“…Pulp and paper mill workers, frequently exposed to chlorine and SO2 gases, have been reported to have a high prevalence of chronic airflow obstruction (70,79,83,84). …”