Some medical aspects of aerosol research

Abstract

Apart from his exposure to natural aerosols man, from earliest times, must have inhaled particles which we now know to have clinical effects; smoke from fires; moulds, spores, pollens and animal danders from his husbandry; bacteria and virus-containing droplets from his neighbours; all could have produced disease. Nor is it safe to assume that mineral industrial aerosols similar to those which were to cause such havoc in later ages were without effect on primitive m an; the flint knappers of Brandon among whom silicosis was rife in the last century were merely carrying on a trade practised by their neolithic ancestors who quarried their flint nodules from nearby Grimes Graves. Theophrastus reported that certain black fossils were inflammable and gave off an irritant smoke; in 1273 the use of coal was first prohibited in London as being ‘prejudicial to health’ and in 1661 John Evelyn submitted to Charles II his brilliant pamphlet ‘ Fumifugium, or the Smoake of London Dissipated’, a document which contains some uncannily accurate descriptions of our modern urban aerosols and their clinical effects. But it was the effects of mine dust that first directed man’s attention to the study of aerosols. Hippocrates described dyspnoea among metal diggers, Pliny wrote of the use of respirators, and Agricola, by virtue of his experience as official physician in the notorious Joachimstal, described in De Re Metallica (1556) the need to ventilate mines because of the lethal effect of dust. The industrial revolution produced aerosols, siliceous and otherwise, which took dreadful toll of workers in many trades. New processes and new machines introduced to speed production often produced higher concentrations of particles than had the methods they displaced.