Key points
- The Respiratory Health Program’s mission is to provide national and international leadership to prevent work-related respiratory diseases and improve workers’ respiratory health.
- The program generates new knowledge and transfers that knowledge into practice to benefit workers.
Overview
To Learn More
The Respiratory Health Program (RHP) advances NIOSH efforts to prevent work-related illness, improve workers’ respiratory health, and encourage multidisciplinary cooperation and collaboration across NIOSH programs and with external partners. RHP addresses a range of hazardous exposures and related health outcomes in every industrial sector. Adverse work-related health outcomes include lower and upper airways diseases, interstitial lung diseases (e.g., coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, asbestosis, silicosis); respiratory tract and pleural malignancies (e.g., lung cancer, mesothelioma); and new and emerging exposures and related diseases (e.g., engineered stone).
Program priorities
The RH program has selected research priorities on the basis of burden, need, and impact and collaborated with other NIOSH research programs to write the research goals in the NIOSH Strategic Plan for FYs 2019-2026. Priority areas include (but are not limited to):
- Preventing fixed airway diseases such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), obliterative bronchiolitis (OB), and other diseases affecting airways such as hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP) among workers in Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing.
- Reducing diseases caused by mineral dusts including silica and elongate mineral fibers, and mixed exposures, such as those associated with welding, abrasive blasting and nanomaterials among Construction workers.
- Reducing respiratory disease among Healthcare and Social Assistance workers including work-related asthma caused by a variety of agents associated with lung diseases in dental personnel.
- Reducing respiratory diseases among Manufacturing workers including dust-induced and fixed airway diseases and work-related asthma.
- Reducing diseases caused by mineral dusts including asbestos, coal mining dust, and silica, and those caused by mixed exposures among Mining workers.
- Reducing silica-induced respiratory diseases caused by hydraulic fracturing among Oil and Gas Extraction workers.
- Preventing fixed airway diseases such as COPD caused by dust and smoke inhalation among Public Safety workers.
- Preventing lower and upper airway diseases caused by mixed exposures (including dampness and mold) among Services worker.
What we've accomplished
in 2022-2023, the Program:
- Contributed to understanding the occupational implications of COVID-19 by:
- Summarizing data from a daily survey conducted by a social media company to identify differences by occupation in frequency of COVID-19 cases (Figure 1) and vaccination.
- Reporting in an article and NIOSH Science Blog that common do-it-yourself (DIY) air filtration units can reduce exposure to simulated respiratory aerosols in mock classroom (Figure 2).
- Estimating N95 respirator needsof U.S. nonhealthcare essential workers during a respiratory infectious disease pandemic.
- Summarizing data from a daily survey conducted by a social media company to identify differences by occupation in frequency of COVID-19 cases (Figure 1) and vaccination.
- Contributed, in 2022, by CWHSP:
- Processing 6,074 chest x-rays.
- Reviewing 582 spirometry tests from 41 CWHSP Spirometry Clinics in 12 states: CO, IL, IN, KY, MS, MT, ND, OH, PA, TX, WV, WY.
- Reviewing 582 spirometry tests from 41 CWHSP Spirometry Clinics in 12 states: CO, IL, IN, KY, MS, MT, ND, OH, PA, TX, WV, WY.
- Returning mobile unit to pre-pandemic field work and serving 526 active/retired miners in Appalachia (KY, VA, WV).
- Processing 6,074 chest x-rays.
- Offered through the Spirometry Training Program’s 34 sponsorships were 305 initial and refresher in-class, virtual, and blended courses.
What's ahead
In the future, the Program aims to:
- Conduct health screening of coal miners through the CWHSP.
- Evaluate and approve new sponsorships and alternative platforms for spirometry training courses to meet increasing demands.
- Conduct a survey to characterize work practices among engineered stone countertop fabricators, who are at high risk for silicosis, (a progressive, debilitating, and sometimes fatal lung disease) to identify measures to reduce respirable silica dust exposure. Silicosis is caused by inhaling respirable silica dust particles that are small enough to reach deep in the lungs.
- Evaluate chemical and aerosol emissions from thermal spray processes in laboratory chamber tests. These processes involve spraying melted product under pressure onto a surface.
- Measure airborne chemical exposures associated with different types of manicures performed and nail products used in U.S. nail salons.
Resources
NORA Council
The NIOSH Respiratory Health Program helps lead the NORA Respiratory Health Cross-Sector Council, which brings together individuals and organizations to share information, form partnerships, and promote adoption and dissemination of solutions that work. The council seeks to facilitate the most important research, understand the most effective intervention strategies, and learn how to implement those strategies to achieve sustained improvements in workplace practice.