Exposure to cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) dust can result in acute pulmonary inflammation marked by elevation of neutrophils in nasal and bronchoalveolar lavage fluids and activation of alveolar macrophages. Such exposure may also result in chest tightness and airway constriction. For this reason, OSHA has established a PEL of 0.2 mg/m3 for yarn manufacturing and cotton washing. This PEL is for an 8 h workday. Questions concerning an appropriate standard for extended workdays (longer than 8 h) have been raised. As an initial attempt to address this issue, we employed a guinea pig (Cavia porcellus) model exposed to 1.5 mg/m3 of cotton dust for 4 to 16 h and monitored pulmonary inflammation 0 and 18 h post-exposure. Total bronchoalveolar lavage cells, leukocytes, and red blood cells increased linearly with total exposure (concentration x exposure time) both immediately and 18 h post-exposure. Macrophage activity, measured as zymosan-stimulated chemiluminescence, exhibited a similar linear relationship to total exposure. These animal results suggest that the concentration-time product may be an appropriate exposure metric when evaluating the risk of acute inflammation in response to cotton dust.
Links with this icon indicate that you are leaving the CDC website.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cannot attest to the accuracy of a non-federal website.
Linking to a non-federal website does not constitute an endorsement by CDC or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the website.
You will be subject to the destination website's privacy policy when you follow the link.
CDC is not responsible for Section 508 compliance (accessibility) on other federal or private website.
For more information on CDC's web notification policies, see Website Disclaimers.
CDC.gov Privacy Settings
We take your privacy seriously. You can review and change the way we collect information below.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
Cookies used to make website functionality more relevant to you. These cookies perform functions like remembering presentation options or choices and, in some cases, delivery of web content that based on self-identified area of interests.
Cookies used to track the effectiveness of CDC public health campaigns through clickthrough data.
Cookies used to enable you to share pages and content that you find interesting on CDC.gov through third party social networking and other websites. These cookies may also be used for advertising purposes by these third parties.
Thank you for taking the time to confirm your preferences. If you need to go back and make any changes, you can always do so by going to our Privacy Policy page.