Abstract:

This study was carried out to investigate the effects of a low hypochlorite concentration as a cleaning substance on pulmonary functions. For this purpose, 23 cleaning workers from the Faculty of Medicine of Suleyman Demirel University were selected as the study group and 14 people from technical personnel as the control group. The study group consisted of 17 females and 6 males with a mean age of 26.4±5.6 years and the mean duration of exposure to the substance in question was 10.3±10.7 months without any atopy history. The control group consisted of 12 females and 2 males with a mean age of 24.4±5.4 years. There was no atopy history. The total IgE level and the total blood eosinophil count of the study group and those of the control group were similar. Pulmonary function tests were applied three times to all the subjects on Monday morning, and Monday and Friday afternoon. In the study group, 16 subjects were symptomatic under the working circumstances and the results of the physical examination were positive in 5 out of the symptomatic subjects. The baseline values of FVC (%), FEV1 (%), FEV1/FVC (%), FEF25-75 (%), PEFR (L/s), and PEFR (%) were higher than those of the control group. It was found that the decreases in the FEV1 (L), FEV1 (%), FEV1/FVC (%), PEFR (L/s), and PEFR (%) values of pulmonary function tests measured on Monday afternoon and the decreases in all the test values except the FVC value measured on Friday afternoon were statistically significant. There were no differences between the baseline values of pulmonary function tests except the FVC (L) value of the symptomatic and the nonsymptomatic subjects. There were significant decreases in the FEV1 (%), FEV1/FVC (%), and PEFR (%) weekend values of the nonsymptomatic group. There were statistically significant increases in the FEV1 (L) and FEV1/FVC (%) weekend values of the control group compared to the baseline values. There were statistically significant decreases in the FEV1 (L), FEV1 (%), FEV1/FVC (%), and PEFR (%) weekend values of the study group compared to those of the control group. These results suggest that even a low concentration of hypochlorite can affect the pulmonary functions by causing irritation in the airways.

Keywords: