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To: Ilaine who wrote (97042)	1/26/2005 5:01:18 PM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 793719

What you are describing is a forced vital capacity test. This measures certain dynamic variables. Other pulmonary function tests require you to breath in and out slowly to measure more static variables. Still other tests use various strategies to measure lung volumes. It is especially tricky to measure the residual volume of the lung - this is air left in the lung when you have expired all the air you can voluntarily blow out. It is the lung volume variables where you see differences in blacks and whites. Have you ever taken a spirometry test? Basically you take a really deep breath and blow as hard as you can into a gadget that measures your lung capacity.

To: Ilaine who wrote (97042)	1/26/2005 5:02:38 PM
From: neolib	Respond to of 793719

A white employee is deemed to have Brown Lung at level X on the pulmonary function testing, but a black employee's lung capacity won't trigger the same protections until it is less than 85% of white pulmonary function. I gathered as much after reading the quote. The sentence about OSHA cotton dust exposure levels was where I erred. Sorry! However, I now have a different problem. It made sense that OSHA would have lowered dust concentration levels for blacks if they have smaller lung/body mass size (my WAG). What I don't see is how the standard implies that blacks can work in dirtier conditions. If the 0.85% is accurate for black/white, then the same conditions while cause the OSHA test results to trip for the disease equally reliably in both blacks and whites (unless other factors dominate). No? So the standard looks correct.

To: Ilaine who wrote (97042)	1/26/2005 5:10:46 PM
From: neolib	Respond to of 793719

Sorry CB, after reading the standard, you still do need the math refresher <vbg> My first kneejerk response was correct, although for the wrong reason. Suppose the disease threshold was 0.85 of normal for whites. Then healthy blacks would register has having the disease. You must normalize! Pretty basic. Does seem like a pretty crude test however. I wonder how reliable it was?