RESUMEN
There are numbers of marble factories are found in Agra, UP, India and the numbers of workers perform their duties to those factories to maintain their family wages. Majority of the workers are habituated to smoke during their working period. The marble dust as well as smoking habits both affects the pulmonary parameters. Therefore an attempt has been taken to find out the severity of the affect of dust on pulmonary parameters in marble factory workers with respect to nonsmokers and residing far away from the marble factories, i.e., persons residing in Bareilly, UP, India. The study was performed on 90 male marble factory workers in which 62 workers with smoking habits and 28 workers are nonsmokers. And they are compared with 20 smokers and 20 non-smokers subjects, which are denoted as control group, considering same economic status. The subjects’ height and weight were taken following the standard procedure. The pulmonary parameters [Forced Vital Capacity (FVC), Forced Expired Volume-1st sec. (FEV1), Peak Expiratory Flow Rate (PEFR), Forced Expiratory Flow (FEF25-75%) and Maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV)] were determined by means of a portable multifunctional computerized spirometer. The results indicates that there was a significant difference in FVC (p<0.001) and FEV1 (p<0.01) between control group and marble workers with smoking habits. It may be concluded that the workers of marble factories are directly affected from the dust of marble during working as well as non working period also, due to they were residing near the marble factories. This direct effect of the workers due to the inhalation of marble dust through the respiration, which might be causes restrictive or obstructive lung diseases.