Diseases caused by asbestos dust and the trend of their development in exposed workers in 1951 - 2003
Abstract
The paper summarizes the principal information on the properties and effects of asbestos and a survey of diseases which can be recognized in the Czech Republic as occupational diseases according to the List of Occupational Diseases (Government Order 290/1995 Coll.).The paper lists possible diagnostic means and criteria for evaluation and presents a survey of developmental trends of the disease in exposed workers of the plant under study. In the period of years 1951?2003, 87 cases of occupational diseases were reported.
The first asbestosis occurred in 1955, the first lung cancer in a patient with a previously reported asbestosis in 1962, the first pleural mesothelioma in 1976, the first asbestosis of the lung with concurrent lung cancer in 1981, and the first pleural hyalinosis in 1999. A very serious fact is that 56, i.e. 64,4 % of diseases, particularly lung cancer and mesothelioma, were diagnosed after the termination of working in risk and many years of latency.
A long-term folow-up of workers, ev