This application proposes a population-based survey on the impact of having been a miner on Hispanic and non-Hispanic white men in two coal- mining communities, Raton, New Mexico, and Trinidad, Colorado. Conventional respiratory survey methods (questionnaire, spirometry, and chest x-ray) will be supplemented by assessment of quality of life and functional status. This study will provide contemporary, needed information on the magnitude of respiratory abnormalities in former miners and the consequences of these abnormalities for functional status and quality of life. A phone census will be conducted of all the occupied housing units in Raton and in Trinidad to identify active and former miners. A respiratory disease and quality of life survey will be conducted on 500 former miners and 500 nonminers in different age groups, ranging from 40 years to more than 70 years of age. A sample of former miners and nonminers will have activity patterns assessed using diaries and ambulatory heart rate monitoring. This proposal will develop Dr. James' skills in conducting population-based epidemiologic research and provide experience needed to achieve independence as a epidemiologic researcher on occupational and environmental lung diseases. The Pulmonary and Critical Care Division at the University of New Mexico, in conjunction with the New Mexico Tumor Registry, has extensive experience in conducting population-based epidemiologic studies on respiratory disease and cancer. Over the past eight years, the Miners' Clinic at the Miners' Colfax Medical Center, Raton, New Mexico has performed state-wide screening of miners. The hospital has a fully equipped pulmonary function laboratory and a van equipped for field surveys that are available to this project. The towns of Raton, New Mexico and Trinidad, Colorado with more than a century of active coal mining and well-defined populations and geographic boundaries, are appropriate candidates for this population-based epidemiologic study.
| Mulloy, K B; James, D S; Mohs, K et al. (2001) Lung cancer in a nonsmoking underground uranium miner. Environ Health Perspect 109:305-9 |
