The second study which looked at the lifetime risk of chronic occupational diseases amongst construction workers.
This focused on dust-related occupational lung disease, COPD & hearing loss. Methods Estimates of lifetime risk were performed based on 12,742 radiographic evaluations, 12,679 spirometry tests, and 11,793 audiograms.
Control groups from the same dataset were used for comparison.
Results:
Over a 45-year working life, 16% of construction workers developed COPD, 11% developed an increase a parenchymal radiological abnormality (changes in lung density suggesting dust exposures), and 74% developed hearing loss.
The risk for occupationally related disease over a lifetime in a construction trade was 2-6 times greater than the risk for non-construction workers.
For COPD, roofers were the most likely trade for COPD over lifetime exposure (33%) compared to electricians (14.2%), & labourers & carpenters (around 18%, respectively). Boilermakers were the lowest at 12%.
For material hearing loss, 88% of carpenters, 69% of labourers, 61% electricians developed material hearing loss over lifetime. Roofers were the lowest in this sample at 56%.
Notably the risks reflect a lifetime accumulation of exposures both occupational and nonoccupational. Authors highlight, for instance, that construction workers may be more likely to smoke & less likely to quit compared to white collar workers which may impact the results.
Authors highlight the advantages of using lifetime exposure versus annual. For instance, saying that construction workers may have a 25% increase in hearing loss above other industrial workers doesn’t “communicate the finding that just about all construction workers develop material hearing loss over a lifetime” (p1242).
Further, their data shows that hearing loss starts to develop only a few years into a career in construction, i.e. “On average, 3% of construction workers in the early 20 years of age have already developed material hearing loss”; a finding they say would be missed if risk was only expressed as an average for all workers.
One weakness recognised in the study is that it “uses past experience to predict future risk, even though it is clear that safety and health protections, including exposures to disease risks, have changed over time”
SafetyInsights.org 