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Friday 19, November, 2004, 12:30-18:30, (16:00-17:00, Q&A) No.3 CR Saturday 20, November, 2004, 09:30-18:30, (16:00-17:00, Q&A) No.3 CR Sunday 21, November, 2004, 09:30-12:30, No.3 CR Poster Sessions Asbestos Occupational Exposure in Some Industries from Romania Rodica Stanescu Dumitru1, Vali Constantinescu1, Elena Ruse2 1Occupational Heatth Department,Institute of Public Health Bucharest,Romania [not-attended] 2Faculty of Industrial Chemistry, Politechnic University, Bucharest, Romania ABSTRACT The aim of this report was to investigate asbestos occupational exposure in some industries from Romania: manufacturing of asbestos gaskets (I), execution of asbestos fabrics (II) and asbestos cement production (III). For this purpose, we have assessed the following parameters: airborne asbestos concentration, urinary asbestos concentration and sputum citology in occupationally exposed workers, in comparison with a control group. Both airborne and urinary asbestos fibres were characterized by measuring their lengths and diameters and the airborne and urinary concentrations were calculated. We used a Philips 515 scanning electron microscope connected to an energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis system in order to obtain both sizes and chemical composition data. The Saccomanno method was used for sputum citology. We identified airborne chrysotile fibres in processes I and II and chrysotile and crocidolite fibres in process III. The results showed the following variation in the mean values of airborne fiber length and diameter: II>I>III. Airborne asbestos concentration varied as follows: III>I>II. Parallelism can be noticed between the airborne fibres' sizes and the sizes of the urinary fibres. Urinary asbestos concentration (expressed in number of fibres/ml of urine and in mass of asbestos /ml of urine) varied as follows: III>I>II. Part of the urinary fibres is degraded. In the control group there were no asbestos fibres in urine. In processes I and III sputum cytology showed dust loaded macrophages and mild atypia of bronchial cells. In process II, the same atypia occurred and the macrophages were less loaded. We conclude that the occupational exposure in asbestos cement manufacturing is one of the most harmful in Romania because of: -the presence of airborne crocidolite fibres; -the small airborne fibres sizes; -high airborne fibres concentrations. |