Nippon Eiseigaku Zasshi (Japanese Journal of Hygiene)
Online ISSN : 1882-6482
Print ISSN : 0021-5082
ISSN-L : 0021-5082
Volume 36, Issue 4
Displaying 1-9 of 9 articles from this issue
  • Masayuki Imai, Katsumi Yoshida, Yasuko Tomita, Kazuo Kasama, Masayoshi ...
    1981 Volume 36 Issue 4 Pages 671-677
    Published: October 30, 1981
    Released on J-STAGE: February 17, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In order to clarify the relationship over time, between air pollution and chronic obstructive lung diseases in Yokkaichi, Japan, certificates of death from disease for the years 1963 to 1979 were studied.
    The following results were obtained:
    1) Several years after the frequency of chronic obstructive lung diseases had increased, the mortality rates from such diseases also began to rise.
    2) With the reduction of pollution as a result of measures taken to control its sources, the mortality rate for asthma fell first, and then, those for chronic bronchitis and emphysema also fell to the levels observed in the control areas.
    3) When levels of pollution in the polluted areas were highest, deaths from bronchial asthma occurred at increasingly younger ages.
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  • Application of multivariate statistical analysis
    Mieko Iwamoto, Hidenori Dodo, Junko Yoneda, Yoichi Ueda
    1981 Volume 36 Issue 4 Pages 678-686
    Published: October 30, 1981
    Released on J-STAGE: February 17, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In order to ascertain the relationship between the cause of death and social environment, after a principal component analysis, the authors applied a varimax rotation to the statistical data obtained in 1970 and 1975, for all Japanese prefectures except Okinawa.
    Twelve of the major causes of death, including lung and stomach cancers, and seven socio-geographical conditions were selected as variables. As a result of factor analysis, three factors were extracted.
    The first factor (F1) accounted for about 30% of the total variance. It represented characteristic disease patterns, possibly due to urbanization. Prefectures could be classified into those where high death rates due to lung cancer accorded with the degree of urbanization, and into those rural areas where accidents were the major cause of death.
    The second factor (F2) accounted for about 18% of the total variance. It represented disease patterns posibly based on temperature. Prefectures were classified into those where major causes of death included liver cirrhosis, tuberculosis and hypertension-i.e. western Japan-and those where stomach cancer and cardiovascular disease were the major causes-i.e. eastern Japan.
    The third factor (F3) was characteristic of rural areas in northern Japan.
    Standardized scores from (F1), (F2) and (F3) were plotted for 1975, and twelve prefecture types were obtained.
    Death rates from the twelve diseases between 1972 and 1977 for the twenty-five cities in Yamaguchi Prefecture were calculated with reference to the five social environmental conditions measured by officical statistics for each municipality.
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  • Mayumi Manabe, Osamu Wada, Shigeo Manabe
    1981 Volume 36 Issue 4 Pages 687-693
    Published: October 30, 1981
    Released on J-STAGE: February 17, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Recent laboratory research indicated that triphenyltin fluoride (TPTF) causes a marked increase in the amounts of triglyceride (TG), cholesterol (T-Ch) and phospholipid (PL) in rabbit plasma. The purpose of the present study was to clarify the mechanism causing TPTF hyperlipemia. Male rabbits were given a single oral dose of 5% TPTF in sesame oil at the rate of 0.1g per kg body weight. To determine postheparin lipolytic activity (PHLA), blood was withdrawn after 300 units of heparin was injected. The results obtained were as follow:
    (1) Lipemia occurred regularly in all animals within 2 days after TPTF administration. TG and T-Ch also showed remarkable increases, the former rising to levels as high as 3, 000mg/dl plasma. However, both TG and T-Ch returned to previous levels within the subsequent 2 weeks.
    (2) Most liver and renal function tests were within normal ranges except that there were slight increases in GOT and total bilirubin in serum and glucose appeared in the urine.
    (3) The lipoprotein which accumulated in the plasma was found by density gradient centrifugation to be of a chylomicron and a very low density type (VLDL).
    (4) PHLA, plasma lipoprotein lipase (LPL) and adipose tissue LPL activity decreased rapidly after TPTF administration and this level remained constant for the two-week observation period. The degree to which tissue LPL activity was reduced was greater than for plasma LPL activity.
    (5) PHLA and LPL amounts released into plasma by heparin were less and were maintained for a shorter duration in the TPTF group when compared with the control group.
    (6) Tin levels in adipose tissue increased in the first day after administration, but low levels were observed thereafter.
    (7) In the range of concentrations 10-3 to 10-7, TPTF and its metabolites (di-, monophenyltin and inorganic tin) did not inhibit LPL activity in vitro. In rabbits, TPTF-induced hyperlipemia is classified as type V following the classifications devised by the World Health Organization. The results further suggest for abnormal patterns that hyperlipemia is caused by the reduced synthesis of LPL in tissues. Therefore, TPTF-induced hyperlipemia in rabbits may be used not only as a model for type V hyperlipemia, but the sensitive reactions of PHLA and LPL activity in plasma to TPTF may be used as an index TPTF exposure.
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  • Minoru Sugita, Naohito Yamaguchi, Yoshinori Masuda
    1981 Volume 36 Issue 4 Pages 694-700
    Published: October 30, 1981
    Released on J-STAGE: February 17, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the microscopic examination of blood red cells in urine sediment, there is no standardized method in terms of how many visual fields should be observed or how the results should be expressed. In order to determine such standards, samples from fifteen students were collected and red blood cells in the sediment of the urine were observed approximately 100 times through a high power microscope. When the mean number of red blood cells per visual field is three or less, the number of such cells in each visual field shows a Poisson distribution. Here, observing 20 visual fields is sufficient to count red blood cells in a routine examination, since the 95% confidence interval of the mean is narrowed when 20 visual fields are examined. In this case, only the mean number of red blood cells needs to be expressed. However, when the mean is greater than three, the number of red blood cells in each visual field shows a Pólya-Eggenberger distribution, because some visual fields may contain aggregated red blood cells, making the variance greater than the mean. In this case, 20×C visual fields should be examined (where C is the value of variance/mean), and the results should be expressed using the variance as well as the mean.
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  • Shizuko Sugiura, Chiyoko Ito, Etsuko Akashi, Kiyoo Matsui, Hiroshi Sak ...
    1981 Volume 36 Issue 4 Pages 701-711
    Published: October 30, 1981
    Released on J-STAGE: February 17, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of this study was to clarify the degree of information published by newspapers concerned with health education. Two major newspapers were observed for the years 1972 and 1976, and the contents of editorials, personal columns, letters to the editor and obituary notices were analyzed.
    The results were as follows:
    1) Similar tendencies were noted for editorials, personal columns and letters to the editor, in that the ratio of the number of health articles to the total number of articles was significantly lower in 1976 than in 1972. Articles about environmental pollution, and occupational health and safety decreased between 1972 and 1976.
    2) Articles dealing with health problems were most often concerned with the citizens' campaign for the health problem. On the other hand, proposals and requests about health problems were frequently aimed at governmental or at public organizations.
    3) Persons reported about in obituary notices were generally male, forty years of age and over, and the directors of companies or corporations. Their causes of death were different when compared with the general population adjusted for sex and age.
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  • (2) Concentrations of 23 elements in hairs of foreigners
    Hisayuki Teraoka
    1981 Volume 36 Issue 4 Pages 712-717
    Published: October 30, 1981
    Released on J-STAGE: February 17, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Hair samples of from 0.2 to 5.0kg, each a mixture of hair taken from forty to one thousand persons (if 5g of hair is equivalent to the hair from one person), were collected from the barber shops and beauty salons in the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand, the Philippines, Mexico and Japan, and the concentrations of 23 chemical elements were simultaneously determined by the emission spectrographic method. The following results were obtained:
    (1) High concentrations of Fe, Sn, Ni and Bi were found in dark reddish-brown female hair collected from the Philippines, Mn in black hair from Japan and Mexico, and Ag in male hair from New Zealand (Table 2). While, lower concentration of many elements were found in grey or white hair from Hawaii and Great Britain. In addition, significant differences between the concentrations of many elements for hair subjects from Mexico and Japan, in spite of the hair being the same black colour, were noticed.
    (2) In the case of Maxican chromium workers, markedly high concentrations of Cr were recorded for their hair, i. e. the Cr content (67±65ppm, n=21) in male workers was approximately 37 times higher than that for normal subjects (1.8±0.33ppm, n=6), and similarly almost seven times greater (9.5± 5.4ppm, n=3) in female workers than normal persons (1.4±0.75ppm, n=16) (Table 3 and Fig. 1).
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  • Part 6 Biological types and properties in airborne staphylococci dispersed from men in the room
    Kazuyuki Terayama, Fumiko Hirata, Hideki Ohno, Tadao Kawarabayashi, Ma ...
    1981 Volume 36 Issue 4 Pages 718-724
    Published: October 30, 1981
    Released on J-STAGE: February 17, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Airborne staphylococci (A.S.) dispersed in a poorly ventilated model laboratory by healthy volunteers were investigated in order to compare their biological types and biological characteristics with those of resident staphylococci (R.S.) isolated from the bodies and clothing of the same subjects. The results obtained are as follows.
    1. Bacteria in the air include a large proportion staphylococci in comparison with the numbers found in the sediment on the floor.
    2. The distribution of A.S. into the biological-type subgroups proposed by Baird-Parker (1962, 1963) significantly differed from that for R.S.
    3. With the exception of R.S. isolated from hair, there was not significant difference between A.S. and R.S. as measured by the anaerobic mannitol fermentation test.
    However, positive A.S. rates were significantly lower in the coagulase and compact-type colony formation tests when compared with those for R.S. collected from the nose. The positive rates of A.S. were higher for the DNase and lysozyme tests than R.S. from any part of the bodies of the human subjects.
    The results suggest that changes in biological characteristics as well as biological types of staphylococci dispersed from human bodies in the air are caused by environmental changes.
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  • Biochemical examination and electron microscopic observation
    Hiramitsu Suzuki, Osamu Wada
    1981 Volume 36 Issue 4 Pages 725-733
    Published: October 30, 1981
    Released on J-STAGE: February 17, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Male mice were given either one intraperitoneal injection of copper (25μmol CuSO4⋅5H2O/kg body weight) or one injection daily for seven days in order to determine copper metabolism in the liver. Copper contents in whole livers, bile and subcellular liver fractions were measured and the copper in liver cell granules was determined by electron X-ray microanalysis.
    The results were as follows:
    1) Absorbed copper was incorporated into soluble, lysosomal and peroxisomal fractions of the liver and released from the peroxisomal fraction within 24hrs after one injection of copper. Moreover, copper content in the bile increased. Excessive copper was found to be incorporated into the peroxisomal fraction at high levels as measured 24hrs after the termination of daily injections for seven days.
    2) Electron microscopy revealed greater numbers of lysosomes and large dense bodies in both pericanalicular and perinuclear regions in livers which had received seven copper injections when compared to controls. Electron X-ray microanalysis further demonstrated that excessive copper was detectable in the large dense bodies, but not in peroxisomes.
    The results demonstrate that excessive copper in the liver is incorporated into both the lysosomes and large dense bodies contained in the peroxisomal fraction and then excreted into the bile, and suggest that the large dense bodies play an important role in the metabolism of copper in liver cells.
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  • (Part 6) Renal clearances of amino acids
    Etsuko Kobayashi, Ryumon Honda, Koji Nogawa, Schunichi Kawano, Michiko ...
    1981 Volume 36 Issue 4 Pages 734-741
    Published: October 30, 1981
    Released on J-STAGE: February 17, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Endogenous renal transport of free amino acids was determined in six suspected itai-itai patients (female) (group A: severe cadmium poisoning), thirteen women with renal damage from cadmium (B) and three women not exposed to cadmium who served as the control group (C).
    Plasma concentration, urinary excretion, renal clearance rates, net tubular reabsorption, and percentages of tubular reabsorption of 25 amino acids were obtained by short-term clearance studies.
    The results indicated that:
    1) The clearance of most individual amino acids were much higher in the Cd-exposed group than in the control group.
    2) The percentages of tubular reabsorption of most amino acids were characteristically lower in the Cd-exposed group than in the control group.
    3) Amino acid clearance patterns were similar for suspected itai-itai patients and women with renal damage from cadmium.
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