THE WOMEN CARD-ROOM WORKERS AND
THE SPINNERS
A similar procedure was adopted in studying the
women card-room workers, but they were not
examined clinically and were seen by only one
observer. The M.V.V. was not measured. As byssinosis
has not been reported previously among
spinners, all those (with one exception) who gave a
history of the disease were seen by the second observer
and Professor R. E. Lane, and were examined
clinically and radiographed at the Manchester
Royal Infirmary. The observers discussed the case
histories of all workers in whom byssinosis was
diagnosed and agreed on the recorded diagnosis.
In the card-room the draw and slubber frames are
close to the carding engines and the intermediate
and roving frames are some distance from them.
The results in Table 10 and Fig. 3 show that the
prevalence of byssinosis in the card-rooms was less
in the workers farther away from the carding
engines, and that very few workers in the spinning
rooms were affected. This epidemiological pattern
was fairly consistent for each of the six mills (see
Appendix II). While there is always some movement
of women tenters in the card-room from job to job,
there were enough card-room tenters who were
known to have worked consistently on the same
jobs to confirm the validity of these results.