[Studies of the propriety of the items adopted for the special health examination of vibration hazards at present (author's transl)].
Skin temperature, vibratory sense, nail press test and pain sense are customarily used as the items in the special health examination for finding vibration hazards at present. These items are measured under the condition of room temperature at 20 to 23 degrees c and after 10-minute immersion in cold water at 5 degrees C or 10 degrees C. In this report, the propriety of these items was investigated on the basis of measurements in 274 healthy chain saw operators and 294 healthy bush cutter operators. The 10-minute immersion test in cold water at 10 degrees C was adopted in this experiment. The results obtained are as follows: Skin temperatures of the chain saw and bush cutter operators did not show any significant difference by age under the condition at the room temperature, but the recovery in the subjects in the twenties was faster than in the other. Skin temperatures at the 10th minute after the 10-minute immersion test in cold water at 10 degrees C showed very wide deviations among the subjects. Vibratory senses of the aged subjects markedly lowered in comparison with those of the younger subjects. Recovery of vibratory sense after the immersion in cold water showed a tendency which is faster than that of the skin temperature. Correlation between the skin temperature and the vibratory sense at the 10th minute after the immersion was statistically significant. Most of the subjects showed the recovery time within 2 sec with the nail press test under the condition of the room temperature and at the 10th minute after the immersion. Above 95% of subjects complained pain sense with one gram weight at the measurement under the all conditions except immediately after the 10-minute immersion test. From the above results, it should be considered that the value of these measurement may be dominated by the age of the subjects and that the immersion test in cold water to the tests of vibratory sense and pain sense may not have important role in the diagnosis of vibration hazards.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D003080:Cold Temperature; D004056:Differential Threshold; D005385:Fingers / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology*; D010146:Pain / Q000503:physiopathology; D010523:Peripheral Nervous System Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology*; D010808:Physical Examination / Q000379:methods*; D011928:Raynaud Disease / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012881:Skin Temperature; D013997:Time Factors; D014732:Vibration