Developments in Brief : Bacteria Toxin Injures Textile Workers’ Lungs

Government scientists have confirmed a hypothesis about an occupational lung disease of textile workers: It’s not the cotton dust that causes it, but endotoxin from bacteria that live on cotton.

In the current New England Journal of Medicine, four scientists from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Morgantown, W. Va., described their study of 61 healthy volunteers who were experimentally exposed to air containing different amounts of cotton dust from selected bales of cotton.

They found that volunteers exposed to the dust experienced chest tightness and reduction of lung capacity similar to the “Monday chest tightness” often reported by cotton mill workers on their first work shift after a weekend off.

But the restriction of breathing was not proportional to the level of cotton dust in the air. Instead, the researchers found, it was proportional to the amount of endotoxin in the particular cotton.

Endotoxin is a toxic substance found in certain disease-producing bacteria and is commonly found on field-grown cotton. The scientists suggested that endotoxins may also be responsible for respiratory impairment in people who work with grain, swine, poultry, compost, sewage and silage.

Chronic exposure to cotton dust can lead to irreversible lung impairment known as byssinosis.