Abstract

Several regulations adopted over the years in Quebec in order to prevent and detect occupational lung diseases mandate pre-employment and routine lung examinations for workers in mines, quarries and sand-pits. The IRSST has been asked to evaluate the impact of the most recent of these regulations, and has created an advisory committee for this purpose. In light of the impossibility of directly, rapidly, and definitively evaluating the impact of this regulation, this project will take the form of an epidemiological (case-control) study in which the severity of illness at the time of diagnosis will be compared in workers with and without a history of mandated examinations.