# Phthalates Exposure and Occupational Symptoms among Slovakian Hairdressing Apprentices
## 3 Results and Discussion
Almost 83% of probands (n = 62) reported current exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (passive smoking) and half of the study population was exposed also in childhood, in agreement with studies worldwide [45; 50; 51; 52; 53]. Moreover, we detected symptoms of stage 1 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) [54] in 4.05% of females (n = 3; p/y = 1.40 \(\pm\) 2.43) and symptoms of simple and mucopurulent chronic bronchitis in 10.8% of subjects (n = 8; 1 male, 7 females; p/y = 1.10 \(\pm\) 1.58). In probands with smoking history (current smokers and ex-smokers), we detected an association between a pack-year index and PEF (\(p\) = 0.002, \(\alpha\) = 0.01) (Mann-Whitney U test). Vital capacity is the lung volume that can be measured as slow vital capacity (VC) or forced vital capacity (FVC). In normal subjects, there is little or no difference between VC and FVC [55]. In our cohort, VC% of PV reached higher values than FVC% of PV in both genders (126.49% vs. 106.83% in males; 124.49% vs. 105.59% in females). It follows from some studies [56; 57] that FVC is smaller than VC both in asthma patients and COPD patients because of airflow limitation, small airway collapse, and gas trapping. The increasing gap between VC% of PV and FVC% of PV from asymptomatic probands through those diagnosed from such as simple and mucopurulent chronic bronchitis to probands with COPD symptoms indicates that those findings could be affected by exposure to chemical substances in our study population. We observed the significant positive association (Pearson) between results of PFTs, either as absolute values or percent of predicted values, and anthropometric parameters, in the female cohort (Table 5). As expected, most statistically significant relationships were with absolute values, however many remained significant even when expressed as a percent of predicted values as follows: With weight (\(p\) = 0.008), BMI (\(p\) = 0.005), WC (\(p\) = 0.003), WHR (\(p\) = 0.005), WHT (\(p\) = 0.003), FMI (\(p\) = 0.009), and FFMI (\(p\) = 0.003). We observed such behavior mostly with parameters related to VC. We also observed an association between FVC and weight (\(p\) = 0.002) and FFMI (0.01). \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Parameter** & **Smokers** & **Ex-Smokers** & **No-Smokers** \\ \hline  & n = 37 & n = 5 & n = 32 \\ \hline FVC\% of PV & 104 \(\pm\) 15 & 105\(\pm\)9 & 106 \(\pm\) 2 \\ FEV1\% of PV & 108 \(\pm\) 14 & 107\(\pm\)10 & 108 \(\pm\) 2 \\ FEV1/FVC & 88 \(\pm\) 6 & 86 \(\pm\) 11 & 87 \(\pm\) 1 \\ PEF\% of PV & 86 \(\pm\) 16 & 89 \(\pm\) 15 & 87 \(\pm\) 2 \\ VC\% of PV & 122 \(\pm\) 15 & 127 \(\pm\) 10 & 125 \(\pm\) 2 \\ MVV\% of PV & 86 \(\pm\) 12 & 83 \(\pm\) 8 & 87 \(\pm\) 1 \\ p/y index & 1.7 \(\pm\) 1.6 & 1.3 \(\pm\) 0.9 & - \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} FVC% of PV, % of predicted values of forced vital capacity; FEV1% of PV, % of predicted values of forced expiratory volume in 1 s; FEV1/FVC, ratio of forced expiratory volume in 1 s to forced vital capacity; PEF% of PV, % of predicted values of peak expiratory flow; VC% of PV, % of predicted values of viral capacity; MVV% of PV, % of predicted values of maximum voluntary ventilation; p/y index, pack year index.  
\end{table} 
Table 4: Pulmonary function test (mean \(\pm\) SD) in studied group affected by smoking habits.