[Report 1965] / Medical Officer of Health, Conisbrough U.D.C.

  • Conisbrough (England). Urban District Council.
Date:
1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1965] / Medical Officer of Health, Conisbrough U.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/82 (page 7)
    I would emphasise in view of the publicity given to cases of typhoid fever that isolated cases are not uncommon and are not necessarily causes for public concern. The Aberdeen outbreak in 1964 was distinct in that the source was unusual and many people became infected before its nature was traced. I would comment on the publicity given to pneumo- coniosis in the South Yorkshire coalfield and the misleading nature of the newspaper article, which indicated that this coalfield had the highest incidence of pneumoconiosis in Great Britain. The statistics were based on x-ray appearances of fresh cases of the disease per thousand workers in the coalfield diagnosed in the years 1960-63. This was at a time when the National Coal Board was engaged in a mass x-ray survey to detect undiagnosed cases in the area and many of the miners were unaware that they were affected. Fresh cases in the Yorkshire coalfield per thousand employed were: — 1960—5-3; 1961—5-2; 1962—4-5; 1963—6-4. In the South-West division (Wales)—1963 4-0. However, for many years the miners in the Wales division have had a yearly examination for this condition and the incidence of 4 per 1,000 would be accepted as an accurate figure. In September 1964 there were a total of 3,420 cases in Yorkshire—a prevalence rate of 32 per 1,000 compared with 5,289 or a rate of 74, per 1,000 in wales. The national rate for mineworkers was 34 per 1,000. It is important to emphasise that bronchitis is responsible for the loss of 29,000,000 working days each year in Great Britain. It is also the third most common cause of death in men over the age of thirty, and thus hits no-one harder than the miner whose bronchitis rate is tVv^ice the national average. Bronchitis is responsible for 5-7% of all deaths and indeed causes more fatalities than pneumonia, tuberculosis, digestive and renal diseases together. It is inferior as a cause of death only to diseases of the heart, to cerebro vascular accidents and to cancer, and its major environmental causes are cigarette smoking and atmospheric pollution. It is to be regretted that in the division three urban districts have taken no measures to implement the clean air act. A recent article in the British Journal of Preventive 6 Social Medicines indicates clearly the influence of atmospheric pollution on school absence due to such conditions as coughs, bronchitis and broncho-pneumonia. The authors found consistently that the amount of such infections were related to the amount of air pollution and that the frequency and severity of these infections increased with its amount. They