Letter to the president of the College of Medicine.

This text reprints the letter written by Giulio Alfredo Maccacaro (1924-1977) to the president of the College of Medicine in Milan, published in Jean-Claude Polack's La medicine del capitale [The medicine of capital]. This re-edition more than 40 years later, in the section Memory and History, seeks to recover the figure of Giulio Maccacaro not in his individual path but rather as a person inscribed in a collective movement--along with Giovanni Berlinguer, Franco Basaglia and many others--that rethought the role of medicine and combined scientific practice with a strong social commitment.

[The effort of being male: a survey on gender and burnout].

Introduction: Stress at work affects more than 40 million people in the European Union - around 22% of workers - and is the second most reported work-related health problem. Gender does not seem to be a constant predictive factor for burnout: some studies showed that women suffer more from burnout than males, other studies proved that males report higher burnout scores while others did not detect any difference at all. These results may be due to gender-related stereotypes, or could even reiflect the preponderance of a specific gender in some jobs.

[Evidence Based Occupational Medicine: ten year experience with audiometric examination in a handicraft company].

This work describes the audiometry threshold assessment of 1000 workers employed in different artisan categories during a period of ten-year noise professional exposure. The hearing loss noise-induced rates were determined by analysing audiometric tests at the beginning of our period of study and after 5 and 10 years of noise exposure. Environmental noise exposures were on average 88 dB(A), but near 90 dB(A) in some work categories.

Influence of GSTM1 genotypes on anti-BPDE-DNA adduct levels in mononuclear white blood cells of humans exposed to PAH.

Objective: Association between genetic deletion polymorphism of GSTM1 (*0/*0 or active) and levels of anti (+/-)-r-7,t-8-dihydroxy-t-9,10-oxy-7,8,9,10-tetrahydrobenzo[a]pyrene (anti-BPDE)-DNA adducts in the peripheral blood lymphocyte plus monocyte fraction (LMF) of PAH-exposed subjects was investigated.

Methods: A total of 94 Caucasian subjects comprised the sample population: 13 coke-oven workers, 19 chimney sweeps, 36 aluminum-anode plant workers, and 26 non-occupationally PAH-exposed subjects (controls). PAH exposure was assessed in each group by means of the urinary excretion of 1-pyrenol (mean group levels 1.