Table 4 Dust Related Diseases

Respiratory diseases are worsened and caused by silica containing dust exposure in ASM settings. Workers and mining communities are at risk of developing silicosis, which can lead to decrease of pulmonary function and increases the risk of (silico-)tuberculosis and lung cancer. Often data collected in mining areas does not reflect the real burden of disease related to dust exposure because consequences might appear delayed once miners have already left the workforce. Sick individuals often also move from mining communities when they fall ill and are thus frequently excluded from data describing the incidence of disease. Predispositions and positive correlations between dust exposure and incidence of cancer in mining communities, as well as infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and HIV, are also described [46, 54,55,56]. A combination of HIV infection and silicosis has a more than additive risk of TB infection in excess of fifteen-fold [57, 58]. This is very important considering that artisanal and small-scale miners have a high burden of HIV and silicosis. It is of paramount significance for governments to put systems in place to improve access to health services for artisanal and small-scale miners [57, 58].