Respiratory tuberculosis in the potteries

A comparison of the notification rates for pulmonary tuberculosis from 1930 onwards between England and Wales and Stoke-on-Trent County Borough shows an excess for Stoke-on-Trent which lasted until the 1950s. A comparison of mortality rates, however, reveals an excess in Stoke-on-Trent which has lasted until the present day. This excess mortality is attributed to a difference in the age distribution of pulmonary tuberculosis in England and Wales compared with Stoke-on-Trent, where there is a striking peak in the incidence of the disease in elderly men and women from the 1950s onwards. It is suggested that this peak is due to reactivation of pulmonary tuberculosis in the cohort who were born in the early years of this century and experienced a severe epidemic of tuberculosis in early adult life which was worse in Stoke-on-Trent than in England and Wales as a whole. The severity of the epidemic in the Potteries may have been attributable to poor environmental conditions including exposure to silica dust among workers in the ceramics industry.