摘要：Counting coated and uncoated inorganic fibers in sputum has been used to investigate the level of environmental or occupational asbestos exposure and the concentration of fibrous dusts in human lung. Inorganic fibers in sputum were counted by light microscopy after chemical digestion and microfiltration processing. The same method was used for processing gastric juice and lung tissue. There were no ferruginous bodies (FB) in sputum from 49 patients without any asbestos exposure. The study of sputum from 125 patients with various asbestos exposure pointed out a high correlation between the number of FB in sputum and the level of asbestos exposure. These 125 patients were classified into three groups according to the type of their asbestos occupational hazard: group I, raw asbestos workers; group II, workers manufacturing asbestos products; group III, workers with mixed industrial dust exposure. For these three groups, the mean number of FB in sputum was 100, 10, and 1, respectively. The comparison of the FB content of sputum and lung parenchyma showed the absence of FB in sputum when the concentration of FB in lung parenchyma was under 1000/cm3 of lung parenchyma; above this concentration the number of FB in sputum was in good correlation with fiber concentration in lung parenchyma. A preliminary study with the use of gastric juice showed that gastric juice is a less sensitive sample for evaluating fiber concentration in lung. The microfiltration method for the counting of uncoated fibers gave results as accurate as those in the centrifugation method. Full text Full text is available as a scanned copy of the original print version. Get a printable copy (PDF file) of the complete article (773K), or click on a page image below to browse page by page. Links to PubMed are also available for Selected References . 155 156 157 158 159 160
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