IMPROVING HEALTH AND CHARACTERIZING THE BURDEN OF DISEASE OF WESTERN MINERS

NIOSH operates the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program (CWHSP), a worker monitoring program for underground coal miners in the U.S. This program was mandated by the 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act and is intended to prevent coal workers’ pneumoconiosis through early detection of disease and voluntary mine transfer to low dust jobs. Recently data from the CWHSP have demonstrated increasing prevalence of pneumoconiosis and progressive massive fibrosis among participating coal miners. Overall, the CWHSP has been shown to be a valuable, timely and accurate surveillance system for monitoring the respiratory health of underground miners. Based on the success of the CWHSP, NIOSH was recently charged to develop a proposal for a new health-oriented initiative aimed at metal and nonmetal miners. A major goal for this activity is to provide new health surveillance information about respiratory and cardiovascular disease among metal and nonmetal miners in the Western United States. Currently little is known regarding the health status of the current Western metal and nonmetal mining workforce. However, data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) have shown elevated prevalence of heart disease (7.1%), hypertension (23.2%), obesity (27%) and current smoking (30%) among workers in the mining sector (all mine types) compared to the rest of the working U.S. population. The new NIOSH initiative will use existing data sources, active surveillance utilizing a mobile examination unit, health protection and health promotion campaigns. This presentation will describe recent findings from the CWHSP and outline the development strategy of the new health surveillance initiative.