Review of literature on occupational exposure to the dusts in Iran over the past 14 years

Nowadays, millions of people are exposed to the dusts in their workplaces. Occupational exposure to dusts is considered as one of the most common and serious occupational hazards to workers’ health. The purpose of this literature review was to review the literature related to the occupational exposure to dusts in Iran published over the past 14 years.
Material and In this review, published articles were obtained from Web of Science, PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Islamic World Sciences Citation (ISC), Magiran, SID، Iran Medex, and Civilica search engine. The main keywords for search were Occupational Exposure, Lung, Dust, Total Dust, and Respirable Dust. The relevant articles published in Iran over the past 14 years were searched and extracted after checking their relevancy. All articles were classified based on the titles, years of publication, places of publication, type of industries, geographic distributions, sampling and analysis methods, fields of study, and the amounts of exposure. Findings showed that in spite of increases in the rate of published literature in recent years and by considering geographical variation and the large number of dust generating firms and industries, a relatively small number of studies was conducted and published in this field. Majority of the studies in this field considered the levels of dust exposure and respiratory effects of dust exposures. In most studies the levels of occupational exposure to dusts (and crystalline silica dusts) were higher than the recommended limit values. Although an increasing number of studies can be seen in recent years on occupational exposure to dusts and their effect, by considering the presence of large and small size industries with dust generating pollution in Iran, the large number of exposed people, adverse-health effects, and the need for control measures, few studies have been published in this field and further works need to be done in this area.