Mart A. Stewart

Smoking and occupational allergy in workers in a platinum refinery.

OBJECTIVE--To test the hypothesis that smoking increases the risk of sensitisation by occupational allergens. DESIGN--Historical prospective cohort study. SETTING--Platinum refinery. SUBJECTS--91 Workers (86 men) who started work between 1 January 1973 and 31 December 1974 and whose smoking habit and atopic state (on skin prick testing with common allergens) had been noted at joining. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES--Results of skin prick tests with platinum salts carried out routinely every three to six months and records of any respiratory symptoms noted by the refinerys occupational health service. Follow up was until 1980 or until leaving refinery work, whichever was earlier. RESULTS--57 Workers smoked and 29 were atopic; 22 developed a positive result on skin testing with platinum salts and 49 developed symptoms, including all 22 whose skin test result was positive. Smoking was the only significant predictor of a positive result on skin testing with platinum salts and its effect was greater than that of atopy; the estimated relative risks (95% confidence interval) when both were included in the regression model were: smokers versus non-smokers 5.05 (1.68 to 15.2) and atopic versus non-atopic 2.29 (0.88 to 5.99). Number of cigarettes smoked per day was the only significant predictor of respiratory symptoms. CONCLUSION--Smokers are at increased risk of sensitisation by platinum salts.

Environmental History: Profile of a Developing Field

IN THE LAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS, and especially in the last ten years, environmental history in the United States has become a recognized field with a strong core of both individual and institutional support. An increasing number of historians are specializing in it. Graduate students can now study with prominent environmental historians in Ph.D. programs at several institutions and can earn a doctorate in the field. The number of academic conferences focused on environmental studies and history have proliferated in the 1990s. Environmental historians have also had their own organization, the American Society for Environmental History, and journal, the Environmental History Review (recently merged with Forest and Conservation History into a new journal, Environmental History, with a combined subscription list of about 2,000), since the mid1970s. Attendance at the biennial ASEH meeting continues to grow. Many history departments in American universities now also offer introductory-level courses in the field. History departments in the West, where the field has deeper roots, have long had courses on the books in environmental history, but universities in other regions are now also offering courses. Many also have environmental studies programs or even separate institutes or colleges that include environmental history as part of their curriculum. Some departments and programs are also now offering advanced courses that often cross disciplinary, as well as na-

If John Muir Had Been an Agrarian: American Environmental History West and South

Environmental history in and of the American South has developed in a different direction than the field in general in the U. S., which has been shaped by its origins in the history of the American West. The history of humans and the environment in the South has been much more driven by the history of agriculture than by frontier or wilderness interactions, as well as by the history of the relationship between white and black Americans and their respective uses of the land in the region. It also has more in common with environmental history outside the U.S. than with the field as it at first developed in the U.S.