Background: Gold mining is multiple activities and procedures that aims to extract gold, these activities start from survey to assess the availability of gold, crushing of large gold ore, transportation, screening, grinding which is continuation of crushingin order to carry out classification, classification and gold mining process (cyanidation, flotation, gravity separation and mercury amalgamation, each of these process has different harm effect on human health and mainly on respiratory system. In Sudan most of gold mining is traditional which not follow proper safety measures and increases the risk, but even in those registered company still there is risk and respiratory system which is at highest risk may developed several disorders that affect its function, both restrictive lung disease and obstructive disease may occur. Despite this few study done in Sudan to assess the effect of gold mining on human health and no one of these study assess the effect of gold on respiratory system.
Objectives: to assess the effect of gold mining on pulmonary function.
Methodology: This is a prospective, cross sectional analytical study, done in Red sea state, eastern Sudan, in period from January 2019 to February 2020.
Result: 250 gold miners from registered company were enrolled in this study. Using simple spirometry test 56 of the study population (22.4%) have restrictive pattern while 12 of them (4.8%) have obstructive pattern. (62.5%) of those with restrictive pattern showed mild restriction, (17.9%) moderate restriction and (19.6%) severe restriction while all obstructive patterns are mild.
Conclusion: Pulmonary function affected in gold miners in red sea state, Sudan due to several causes but period and dose of exposure to various harmful materials are the majorrisks factors. Restrictive patternoccurs more than obstructive pattern. Both obstructive and restrictive disorders are less in this study group because of applying proper safety measures and adhering to it.
Impact Factor
2022: 6.012
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