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The results of a number of chronic respiratory disease surveys carried out in the RSA are presented. Data for Whites and Blacks are compared, and the effect of smoking habits in the two ethnic groups is reported. The results are discussed in the light of other reports on ethnic differences in the literature.
The National Energy Plan announced by President Carter on April 29, 1977 proposed a significant increase in the utilization of the vast domestic deposits of coal to replace the dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas, and increasingly expensive oil from foreign sources, to meet national energy needs. At the same time, in recognition of possible adverse health and ecological consequences of increased coal production and use, the President announced that a special committee would be formed to study this aspect of the National Energy Plan. The Committee held a series of public meetings during November and December 1977 to review a number of special papers on particular problems associated with increased coal utilization. These papers, which were prepared by scientists of the US Environmental Protection Agency; the Department of Energy; the HEW National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; New York University; and Vanderbilt University; provided essential background information for the deliberations of the Committee and were published in EHP Vol. 33, pp. 127-314, 1979. One paper by A. P. Altschuler et al. is published in this volume of EHP. The Committee's basic finding was that it is safe to proceed with plans to increase the utilization of coal if the following environmental and safety policies are adhered to:* Compliance with Federal and State air, water, and solid waste regulations* Universal adoption and successful operation of best available control technology on new facilities* Compliance with reclamation standards* Compliance with mine health and safety standards* Judicious siting of coal-fired facilitiesThe Committee concluded that, even with the best mitigation policies, there will be some adverse health and environmental effects from the dramatic increase in coal use. However, these will not impact all regions and individuals uniformly. The Committee identified six major areas of uncertainty and concern requiring further investigation if the nation is to minimize undesirable consequences of increased coal utilization now, and in the future. Two critical health issues of concern are air pollution health effects and coal mine worker health and safety. Two critical environmental issues are global effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and acid fallout. Two additional important issues of concern are trace elements in the environment and reclamation of arid land.Finally, because of the inadequate data and methodology used in the study of these matters, the Committee strongly recommended the establishment of an improved national environmental data collection, modeling and monitoring system.
OBJECTIVES: The current primary federal dust standard for US underground coal miners of 2 mg/m3 respirable dust is based on British epidemiological information on exposure-response derived in 1969. Since then, much new information has become available. This paper reviews and compares the available information as it relates to the US mining situation. METHODS: Recent exposure-response information on pneumoconiosis and dust exposure derived by British researchers was employed to estimate working-life risks of pneumoconiosis for miners exposed to 2 mg/m3. RESULTS: It is estimated that close to 9% of underground coal miners who work for 40 years in a 2 mg/m3 environment would develop pneumoconiosis (category 1 or greater). Progressive massive fibrosis would develop in 0.7%. CONCLUSIONS: There are unresolved questions relating to the validity of extrapolating findings on British mines and miners to the US and also in predicting disease levels at the low end of the dust exposure spectrum. Given the data available, current information suggests miners who are employed for a working life-time at the current federal dust limit of 2 mg/m3 are still at risk of developing pneumoconiosis.
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INTRODUCTION: The demand for inventive approaches to drug discovery has increased due to the rising costs, time, and failure rates in pharmaceutical research. Large Language Models (LLMs), with their sophisticated natural language processing and generative capabilities, have become potent instruments that have the potential to revolutionize biomedical research. The function of LLMs in different phases of drug development is methodically examined in this article. METHODS: The PRISMA 2020 principles were adhered to in this systematic study. A thorough search for research published between 2018 and 2025 was done using PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. The search terms "large language model," "transformer," "drug discovery," and important sub-domains (such as "de-novo design" and "ADMET") were merged, and two reviewers independently screened the results. Predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to filter studies for relevance. 98 studies out of the 1,285 records that were initially retrieved met the requirements for the final qualitative synthesis. RESULTS: 98 studies that demonstrated the use of LLMs in various drug discovery domains were found during the review. These covered molecular generation, genomics, protein-ligand modeling, ADME/T and toxicity profiling, drug-target interaction and DTI prediction, and biomedical text mining. 42 different LLM-based tools were mapped, including BioBERT, SciSpacy, Drug- LLM, DNA-BERT, GPT-4, and ChatGPT. Predictive accuracy, hypothesis creation, target prioritization, and multi-modal data integration all showed notable gains with these techniques. DISCUSSION: By providing scalable, precise, and effective solutions for data-driven drug discovery, LLMs are revolutionizing the pharmaceutical industry. They allow for the creation of hypotheses and individualized insights across multi-modal biological data, and they perform better than conventional approaches in a number of subdomains. Improvements in performance were task-dependent; the most consistent gains occurred for biomedical text mining, disease-genedrug relationship mapping and drug-target interaction prediction tasks. Yet most evidence for clinical applications is still derived from retrospective studies and benchmark datasets, suggesting a higher need for prospective validation. CONCLUSION: There is revolutionary potential in incorporating LLMs into drug discovery processes. Clinical translation and regulatory uptake will depend heavily on collaborative validation, ethical deployment, and standardization as models become more multimodal and interpretable. Before normal use, extensive prospective benchmarking and head-to-head comparisons with established chemoinformatics pipelines are necessary.
The experiment was performed 64 albino female rats by a single, intretracheal treatment with 50 mg mine dust. Dynamic biochemical studies were carried out - by 3th and 6th months of the experiment. The data obtained were compared with the changes observed in the positive controls - DQ12 and Ti02 The activity of the oxidation-reduction enzymes and hydrolytic ones was enhanced, the content of sulphhydryl groups and soluble proteins was increased. The results obtained are an evidence of the advancing metabolic disturbances in pulmonary tissue, being better manifested by 6th month of the experiment.
Airborne radioactive materials readily contaminate plant surfaces and thus are incorporated into the food chains. Most of the nuclear fission products and naturally occurring radionuclides in the air are carried on solid particles ranging in size from a few submicrons to several millimetres in diameter. Of many available mechanisms, rainfall plays a dominant role in the deposition and removal of radioactive particles from plants. Mechanisms for the deposition of submicron particles, which carry significant amounts of radioactivity, are still not very well understood. Available information on the physicochemical aspects of the retention of radionuclides by plants is inadequate in explaining radionuclide uptake and desorbability. Much of the work reported so far has been carried out on selected fission products only. There is a dearth of data pertaining to naturally occurring radionuclides, especially 222Rn and its daughters, significant amounts of which are released to the environment during uranium mining and milling operations. Radiation damage in plants is difficult to detect except at levels of contamination thousands of times higher than those attained in most real life situations. Existing reports five conflicting accounts of the damage induced by low-level radiation in plants. The literature data discussed in this review are presented as basic information needed for the conduct and interpretation of useful research.
The article covers the data of physiologic and hygienic evaluation of vibration disease prevalence among miners of Far North and evaluation of their work conditions. The authors compare effects of local vibration on miners in the mines with negative ambient temperatures during the year and in those with the low positive temperatures. The negative temperatures and local vibration appeared to disorder formation of specific physiologic response to the stated factors. The data presented cover prevalence and progressing of vibration disease among the miners in Far North.
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Data are presented on the effects on health of talc dusts from exposure in industry and use of talc-containing health products. The mineralogy of talc and the composition of cosmetic and industrial grade talc dusts are described. Studies in animals are reviewed, and epidemiological data are considered in relation to exposures that occur during industrial and consumer uses of talc dusts. Hamsters exposed to 8 mg/m3 of respirable cosmetic grade talc dust for up to 150 minutes a day for 300 consecutive days showed no difference in incidence or nature of pathological lesions from those observed in a group of untreated animals. A retrospective study of the causes of death of 227 talc mine millers exposed to cosmetic grade talc at the threshold limit value for talc (20 million parts per cubic foot) for an average of 15-8 years showed that the causes of death were no different from those in a control cohort not exposed to talc dust. The available data indicate that talc dust exposure in the modern mining of cosmetic grade talc does not appear to be injurious to health. The significantly lower dust exposure in the normal use of cosmetic grade talc dusts in talc-containing health and cosmetic products confirms that their use is not a hazard to health.
Using an ELISA with bacterial sonicate antigens, the prevalence of antibodies to the antigens of 15 legionellae was determined in 319 healthy individuals residing in Taiyuan, China (Shanxi Province). Significant antibody levels were detected to 11 antigens. Confirming earlier studies, an association was noted between cigarette smoking and seroreactivity, however, none was observed between occupation, or sex and seroreactivity. When the response to specific antigens or antigenic "groups" was studied, an association with work site was apparent. These data suggested a higher rate of exposure to Philadelphia 1 type antigens at the Bureau of Mining dormitory and a nearby electric power plant, and to E-327F/NY-23 type antigens at the Shanxi Mining College and Shanxi Daily newspaper. Further studies will define the reservoirs and mechanisms of exposure.
An excess of mortality from stomach cancer has been found in Ontario gold miners (observed (obs) 104, standardised mortality ratio (SMR) 152, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 125-185) and no excess of stomach cancer could be detected in other miners in Ontario (obs 74, SMR 102, 95% CI 80-128). The excess of stomach cancer appeared five to 19 years after the miners began gold mining in Ontario. In that interval, similar patterns of excess mortality from stomach cancer were found in miners born in north America (obs 14, SMR 268, CI 147-450) and in miners born outside north America (obs 12, SMR 280, 95% CI 145-489). Twenty or more years after the miners began mining gold, an excess of mortality from stomach cancer was found in gold miners born outside of north American (obs 41, SMR 160, 95% CI 115-218) but not in gold miners born in north America (obs 37, SMR 113, 95% CI 80-156). The excess of stomach cancer in gold miners under the age of 60 (obs 45, SMR 167, 95% CI 122-223) seems larger than the excess in gold miners between the ages of 60 and 74 (obs 59, SMR 143, 95% CI 109-184). Exposures to arsenic, chromium, mineral fibre, diesel emissions, and aluminium powder were considered as possible explanations of the excess of stomach cancer in Ontario gold miners. Exposure to diesel emissions and aluminium powder was rejected as gold miners and uranium miners were exposed to both agents but an excess of stomach cancer was noted only in gold miners. The association between the excess of stomach cancer and the time since the miner began mining gold suggested that duration of exposure to dust in gold mines ought to be weighted according to the time since the exposure to dust occurred and that an appropriate time weighting function would be one in the interval five to 19 years after each year of exposure to dust and zero otherwise. A statistically significant association between the relative risk of mortality from stomach cancer and the time weighted duration of exposure to dust in gold mines was found in miners under the age of 60. Time weighted indices of exposure to chromium and arsenic were formed for each gold miner by time weighting the product of the duration of exposure to dust in a gold mine and the percentages of arsenic and chromium in rocks in that gold mine. Exposure to mineral fibre was measured in terms of the time weighted duration of employment in those gold mines that contain mineral fibre. A statistically significant association between the excess of stomach cancer in gold miners under the age of 60 and the time weighted index of exposure to chromium occurred and not association was found between the excess of stomach cancer and either the time weighted duration of employment in mines containing mineral fibre. The excess of stomach cancer in gold miners under the age of 60 was better associated with the time weighted index of exposure to chromium than to the time weighted duration of exposure to dust in gold mines. Although the number of cases of gastric cancer that were classified according to the system of Lauren was small, the data suggest that for miners under the age of 60, exposure to chromium is associated with the development of the intestinal rather than the diffuse type of gastric cancer.
In the part I the effect of social and life factors on the development of peptic ulcer in miners has been analysed. Now, in the same population of 8302 miners composing the crew of three coal mines, an evaluation of the role of occupational factors has been performed on the basis of inquiry and documentation data of the outpatient department. It was found that the frequency of peptic ulcer is more dependent on years of employment than on age. The percentage of peptic ulcer cases among the underground crew and this working on the surface did not reveal distinct differences. Only in miners, working underground a shortest time, it was less than in the analogous groups working on the surface. Among miners performing the longest time very arduous work, the frequency of peptic ulcer is less than in the remaining crew. The psychical burden and the paid by the job system as well as night shift work influence the increase of patients. These results demonstrate that in the mining the peptic ulcer hazard is augmented by similar factors as in other industries, the effect of underground work however has not been observed. The conditions of mining induce miners suffering from peptic ulcer to avoid more burdening job and this is why percentage of ill miners is less among those whose work is more arduous.
Isoflavonoid compounds, genistein, psi-tectorigenin and orobol have been implicated as inhibitors of tyrosine-specific protein kinase and phosphatidylinositol turnover. These compounds have been frequently used as a pharmacological tool to assess signal transduction pathways in various cell systems. In the course of analyzing signaling pathways in rat hepatocytes, we obtained an unexpected finding that these compounds transiently increase cytoplasmic free calcium. Since the Ca2+ mobilizing effect was observed in 1 microM calcium containing buffer, the source of the Ca2+ may be intracellular stores. Thus, when interpreting data obtained using these compounds, caution is needed.
The prospective study covered some principles of silicosis formation in workers of polymetallic mines. Mild and mainly diffuse sclerotic type of silicosis was revealed in 13% of the examinees with suspected silicosis, no additional X-ray data and no history, who were under exposure to the dust during 8-10 years. Variably calcified thoracic lymph nodes prove prominent risk of nodular silicosis (16.7%) and mostly progressive silicotuberculosis (50.0%). Increased vascular markings primarily in lower lungs and history of frequent respiratory infections and repeated pneumonia shows diffuse sclerotic silicosis complicated by chronic bronchitis. The data obtained necessitate further improvement of occupational safety and differentiated treatment and prophylaxis to prevent silicosis with its complications.