Respiratory health of two cohorts of terminal grain elevator workers studied 30 years apart.

Introduction: We evaluated the respiratory health of two cohorts of grain terminal elevator workers who participated in one of either respiratory health surveys undertaken in 1978 and 2008.

Methods: Questionnaire and spirometry data from 584 workers from the 1978 survey and 215 workers from the 2008 survey were compared using logistic regression and general linear modeling.

Results: The geometric means of area samples of grain dust averaged 8.