A1691 The Prevalence of Green Tobacco Sickness and Urinary cotinine Concentrations among Korean Tobacco Harvesters

Monday, March 19, 2012: 14:35
Xcaret 2 (Cancun Center)
Kwan Lee, Department of Preventive Medicine, Dongguk University College Of Medicine, Gyeongju-si, South Korea
Seung-hyun Park, Department of Preventive Medicine, Dongguk University College Of Medicine, Gyeongju-si, South Korea
Jung Soo Kim, Department of Preventive Medicine, Dongguk University College Of Medicine, Gyeongju-si, South Korea
Hyun-sul Lim, Department of Preventive Medicine, Dongguk University College Of Medicine, Gyeongju-si, Mexico
Handouts
  • 12_ICOH_A1691_Kwan_Lee_South_Korea(final).pdf (564.2 kB)
    • Introduction
    Green tobacco sickness (GTS) is known as an occupational disease among tobacco harvesters, and a form of acute nicotine intoxication. This study was carried out to understand the prevalence of green tobacco sickness, and measure the urinary cotinine concentrations among Korean tobacco harvesters.

    Methods
    The authors conducted a questionnaire survey cotinine measurement among the tobacco harvesters (40 cases, 20 couples in tobacco harvesting households) in Cheongsong-gun from 2008 to 2009. The applied case definition of GTS was vomiting or nausea and dizziness or headaches during or after tobacco harvesting. We measured cotinine concentration in urine before (morning, T1), during (a.m. T2 & p.m. T3), after (night, T4) tobacco harvesting. And we collected baseline urine (T5) in non-harvesting season. Urinary cotinine was analyzed with a reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system and expressed as geometric mean and standard deviation.

    Results
    The study subjects contained 20 males and 20 females. The prevalence of GTS in 2009 was 37.5%, and was significantly higher in females (55.0%) than in males (20.0%, p<0.05). The incidence density of GTS according to the number of workdays in 2009 was 6.8 spells/100 person·days. The prevalence of GTS in non-smokers was significantly higher than that in smokers (p<0.01). Therefore, smoking was negatively associated with GTS. The concentrations of urinary cotinine from T1 to T4 were respectively 708.1 ?/g.cr (2.1), 550.9 ?/g.cr (1.9), 518.7 ?/g.cr (1.8), and 500.3 ?/g.cr (1.7). We couldn’t observe the trend of urine concentration by the increasing hours of work. The concentration of nicotine in non-harvesting season was 135.4 ?/g.cr (1.7) significantly lower than others of harvesting season.

    Discussion
    In Korea, there were estimated 15,000 tobacco-harvesting workers in 2009, and most may be stricken with GTS. In the future it is expected that more extensive epidemiological studies including the incidence and associated risk factors will be conducted.

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