Preventive Diagnosis in Occupational Pulmonary Disease OBSTRUCTIVE PULMONARY DISEASE that men and women

develop as a consequence of their working environment challenges the chest physician and the investigator who would use physiologic and epidemiologic principles to identify such a disease. Clearly, the death rates from bronchitis among certain exposed occupational groups are higher than those in the general population (1) , and morbidity, as gauged by work time lost, is increased (2). Because the cause of occupational chronic bronchitis is often multifactorial (3) , with smoking an important deter