The Use of Pulmonary Function Testing and Questionnaires as Epidemiologic Tools in the Study of Occupational Lung Disease

¹ National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Appalachian Laboratory for Occupational Safety and Health, Morgantown, West Virginia

Pulmonary function testing and questionnaires are valuable tools in epidemiologic studies of occupational lung disease. Accurate equipment and standardized methodology are vital to obtain reproducible responses. For spirometry, the FVC and FEV₁ show the least intrasubject variability and on questionnaires, occupational and smoking history are more reproducible than symptoms. The limitations of any method used to define a lower limit of normal should be kept in mind and, whenever possible, groups should be compared by use of the distribution of observations in the two groups—not just the prevalence of "abnormal" findings.