[Current progress and new or unrecognized risks in occupational respiratory pathology. Pneumoconiosis in coal miners. Epidemiologic and experimental approach].

In a brief historical review the author shows that the delayed recognition of coal miners pneumoconiosis as an independent nosological entity was mainly due to an insufficiently experimentally orientated approach before 1940. The principal characteristics of the french endemic are described: a slow decline in incidence yet a continued elevated prevalence, due to the increased life span of the sufferers; the late appearance of the first radiological manifestations, most often after the working life of a Miner; a disparity of the endemic levels between mining regions without the reasons being fully elucidated. Finally the principal lines of current research are recalled which take account of new data on epidemiology and modern dust analysis processes as well as information collected in man using recent biological techniques.