Mobility of diesel versus non-diesel coal miners: some evidence on the healthy worker effect

Abstract

Workers who are particularly susceptible to the effects of their occupational exposure, from the perspective of the healthy worker effect, soon leave the workplace. The result of this mobility, called survival bias, is that cross sectional studies based on the survivors underestimate the true risk of occupational exposures. Two questions are addressed in this empirical study of the "survival bias" component of the "healthy worker" effect. Do miners with respiratory impairment or symptoms disproportionately leave jobs that have a potentially harmful respiratory exposure? And does the presence of an additional potentially harmful respiratory exposure, in this case diesel emissions, accelerate the rate of mobility for miners with respiratory impairment or symptoms? No confirmation was found for the survival effect in a study of 738 diesel and 420 non-diesel US underground coal miners. No additional increment in mobility was associated with exposure to both coal mine dust and diesel emissions.