Pulmonary Function Tests in Bakers of Tehran and Comparison with Control Group

It is known that the smoke of the firewood ovens and flour dust are factors that cause airway dysfunctions such as chronic bronchitis and occupational asthma in bakers. For determing the effects of these factors on pulmonary function tests of those bakers who use conventional ovens with fuels other than firewood, we examined 200 bakers in west of Tehran city. In these cases, pulmonary function tests were performed and different parameters such as FVC, FEV1, FEV1/FVC and FEF 25-75% were measured. A comparision was made between these cases and a control group. In this study, the results show that pulmonary function tests of the bakers who have 5 to 30 years of service are not significantly different from that of control group. Thus, it can be concluded that in the study population working with conventional ovens did not lead to a significant chronic airway dysfunction.