The health of the workers and their family dependents of 4 large and of 137 small coalmining stations and companies in Fukuoka Prefecture was investigated by constructing their life tables for 1961 utilizing the records of the Social Health Insurance. Analyzing the expectations of life, the survival ratios, and other indices of the life tables, the follwing results were obtained. 1) The health of the workers and their dependents of the large mines was much better than the national average. 2) The workers and their dependents of the small mines were also in better health than the national average, but inferior to those of the large mines. 3) The workers aged 20 to 54 at the large mines were far superior in health to the average Japanese of the same age group, whereas the corresponding workers of the small mines were markedly inferior to the average Japanese. 4) In the expectation of life at the age 55, the workers of the small mines surprisingly exceeded not only the national average but also the workers of the large mines. 5) The male workers and their dependents of the large mines were better in health than the national average in all the age groups studied except for the age group from 55 to 60 in which the former was surpassed by the latter. 6) The health of the pit workers and their dependents was substantially worse than that of the surface workers and their dependents at the large mines. The pit workers themselves, excluding their dependents, were considered to be less healthy than the surface workers. This difference, however, seemed to have become less pronounced before.

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In the first report, the auther described the fact that the symptomes of acute poisoning by MEK-Oxime resembled to those by Butanone. These studies were taken up for the purpose of clearing up the chronic poisoning by MEK-Oxime.

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1. Erythrocytes in a sample of diluted blood (201 times) was distributed among 9 organs of research and were examined by 28 investigators belonging to these organs, in a way that erythrocytes in one of 20 partitioned medium squares (1/5×1/5mm².) on a hemacytometer were to be counted respectively. And the results were found as follows: (1) The variance within the same investigator agreed with the theoritical value of the variance deduced from the binomial distribution, while it did not with that from the Poison distribution. (2) The variance between positions of the squares on the hemacytometer was not significant as against the random error. (3) The variance between investigators within the same organ of research was significantly greater than that within each investigator, and the variance between different organs was significantly greater than the former, i.e. that between investigators within the same organ. (4) The mean erythrocyte count was 4.512 millions in 1 cub. mm. of blood in this sample. And on this condition the coefficient of variation (c.v.) was 4.7% in the case that same investigator counted erythrocytes in the 5 medium squares repeatedly with the same hemacytomerer, it was 5.7% in the case that each of several investigators in the same organ counted erythrocytes in the 5 medium squares once with the same hemacytometer respectively, and finally it was 7.1% in the case that each one investigator from different organs counted erythrocytes in the 5 medium squares with his own approved hemacytometer respectively. (5) It happened in 42% of the total cases that, corresponding nearly to the theoretically deduced value, that the range between the maximum and minimum erythrocyte counts in each of 5 medium squares was over 20. This proved the rule that the range must be within 20 as non-sense. 2. No change was recognized in the erythrocyte counts even when the diluted blood in a test-tube was left for 53 hours.

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Though the percentage occupied by small scale enterprises is high in the industrial composition of Japan, health supervision of workers engaged in small scale enterprises is far more retarded than that in large scale enterprises. It is necessary to ascertain how retarded the health supervision actually is in order to introduce improvements in environmental sanitation and health supervision of workers engaged in these small scale enterprises. The author conducted a survey on four types of industries by scale, that is bolts and nuts manufacturing industry, garment sewing industry, plastic processing industry, and bread and confectionary industry. It was found that the smaller tha scale the higher the percentage occupied by family members, minor workers, and old aged workers and that there was an increase in small scale enterprises not to provide a weekly rest day to workers. Workers in most of these enterprises work 10∼12 hours per day with a smaller percentage of workers covered by the social security scheme than those of larger enterprises. Environmental sanitation of many of these small scale enterprises is poor and only 13% of such enterprises provide medical examination for tuberculosis with little effort in the way of other health matters. little utilization is made of community medical institutions except for emergency care. Though there were evident signs of collaboration among small scale enterprises, collaboration with regard to health matters was hardly noted in these enterprises. Only 9% of the small scale enterprises were sub-contractors of large scale enterprises while larger percentage of them were sub-contractors of small and medium scale enterprises. None of the small scale enterprises was found to provide a health supervision program.

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