Due to copyright issues, an electronic copy of the thesis must be ordered from the faculty. For the faculty to have time to process the order, the order must be received by the faculty at the latest 2 days before the public defence. Orders received later than 2 days before the defence will not be processed. After the public defence, please address any inquiries regarding the thesis to the candidate.
Trial Lecture – time and place
See Trial Lecture.
Adjudication committee
- First opponent: Professor Ulla Birgitte Vogel, The National Research Centre for the Working Environement,
- Second opponent: Docent Ingrid Liljelind, Umeå University,
- Third member and chair of the evaluation committee: Associate professor Lars Fjellbirkeland, University of Oslo
Chair of the Defence
Associate Professor Cecilie Dahl, University of Oslo
Principal Supervisor
Senior Researcher Raymond Olsen, STAMI
Summary
Workers in the food industry are regularly exposed to airborne agents with allergenic, toxic, or irritating properties, and occupational exposure to bioaerosols is associated with adverse health effects such as reduced lung function and respiratory disease. Due to the complexity of bioaerosols and the wide range of exposure-related symptoms, associations between work exposure and underlying immunological effects remain insufficiently described. In the food industry, exposure is poorly documented outside bakeries and seafood production. This thesis, consisting of four articles, addresses the knowledge gap by systematically measuring exposure to inhalable bioaerosols in various dry food production environments, quantifying inhalable soluble proteins, and assessing the ability of personal work-air samples to induce inflammatory responses in a cell model.
The results show that manual powder tasks such as opening, pouring, mixing, and weighing powders, as well as milling raw materials into powder—produce the highest exposure, and that environments with protein-rich ingredients (bakeries, sweet spread products, spices) have the highest levels of soluble proteins in dust, whereas snacks, nuts, chips, and chocolate production generally have lower levels. Work-air samples triggered clear inflammatory responses in the cell model and when normalized per dust mass, it became evident that even lower dust concentrations (e.g., in coffee production) can involve dust with the ability to elicit a marked response. Thus, health risk depends on both amount and composition, and preventive measures should be prioritized for dusty, manual tasks and raw materials with high bioactive content. Taken together, the findings provide more precise exposure profiles in dry food production and support targeted prevention strategies.
Additional information
Contact the research support staff.