Study of pulmonary (lung) functioning of commercial wheat grinding machine operators in India using spirometric testing.

In ancient times, in India each household had a chakki to mill the wheat. There was no concept of getting wheat grounded from outside. With the fast changing lifestyle, this tradition has almost disappeared now. Today every city of India has numerous commercial wheat grinding machine shops located at various places. Other than states like Punjab, this occupation is mostly unorganized and little has been done to look into the welfare and health of these machine operators. Like most of the occupations, this occupation of wheat grinding also has several occupational hazards and injuries associated with it. The most obvious of them all in this case is due to the continuous exposure of the operators to the rising dust wheat particles, commonly called atta). This perpetual inhaling ofpollutants exposes the operators to risks of pulmonary malfunctioning. Therefore, this paper attempts to determine the pulmonary functioning of the commercial wheat grinding machine operators in India using spirometric testing. On the basis of the anthropometric data, effort has been done to develop the expected lung performance. Further, the actual lung performance of the operators is measured and compared with expected performance.