Immunological Profile of Men with Occupational Exposure to Imissions from Welding of Stainless Steel

Overview

Welding is considered one of the important sources of contamination of working environment by heavy metals as well as othernoxious substances. Many epidemiological studies confirmed the association between welding and different types of health damage.In the present study we made immunological examinations of subjects exposed to the risk of welding stainless steel (19 men, meansage 33 years, 52 % smokers, mean number of years in welding 15.9). From the working environment single samples of theatmosphere were collected and analyzed for the contents of selected metals (chromium, nickel, manganese) and the content ofpolycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The assessed concentrations had only fractions of the maximum acceptable concentration. Theconcentrations of total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons varied between 458.4 and 881.4 ng/m 3 .The authors assessed immunoglobulin levels (IgG, IgA, IgM, IgE), C3 and C4 constituents of complement, beta-2-microglobu-lin, interleukin (IL-1beta), neopterin, transferrin, alpha-1-antitrypsin, alpha-2-macroglobulin, haptoglobin, orosomucoid, prealbu-min, ceruloplasmin and CRP in serum and also lyzozyme and secretory IgA in saliva and the number of phagocytizing cells inwhole blood. The investigated group of men exposed to risk of welding was compared with a group of healthy donors which servedas control (30-100 men for different immune parameters, mean age 38 years). In the group of welders, as compared with controls,elevated values of C3 complement were found (p< 0.001), total IgE (p< 0.05), beta-2-microglobulin (p< 0.05), neopterin (p

Key words:
work exposure, immunological methods, welding workshop