Occupational Health Hazards Among Flour Mills Workers And Smoking Situation Analysis Among Smokers, Assiut

Flour is a complex organic dust consisting of one or a mixture of several cereal grains (wheat, rye, millet, barley, oats or corn cereal) that have been processed or ground by milling. In addition, flour may contain a diverse number of contaminants, such as silica, fungi and their metabolites (mycotoxins), bacterial endotoxins, insects, mites, mammalian debris and chemical additives such as pesticides and herbicides. Occupational exposure to flour dust occurs in different settings, as: bakeries, grain mills and flour mills.

Many industries, including flour mills, generate dust, which is released into air, then inhaled during industrial processes as: cleaning, packaging and shipping. Occupational respiratory diseases are usually caused by extended exposure to irritating or toxic substances that may cause acute or chronic respiratory diseases.

It has long been known that occupational exposure to flour dust may cause respiratory illness, ranging from simple irritation to rhinitis and asthma, due to components of the grains themselves as well as contaminants of the flour dust and additives.

Flour mills workers have been in an environment exposed to flour dust, suffering from sensitization, occupational asthma, allergic rhinitis, obstructive lung diseases and eye infection.

Mill workers' suffer from conjunctivitis, allergic and baker's asthma, wheezing, febrile reactions, grain fever, lung fibrosis, rhinitis, allergic alveolitis, impairment of lung function and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These respiratory symptoms with continuing occupational exposure can lead to worker disability that force them to leave their jobs.