FOI reference: FOI-2025-3120
You asked
I would be grateful if you could provide the number of deaths registered in England and Wales where the cause of death included ICD-10 code J84.1 (Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis), broken down by occupation, specifically identifying individuals recorded as coal miners.
If possible, please include:
- Data by year (for the last 10 years or as far back as available)
- Whether coal miner status is listed as current or former occupation
- Any available breakdown by age group or region
- Whether or not industrial/environmental factors such as coal dust were listed on the death certificate
If this specific occupational coding is not available, I would appreciate clarification on how deaths involving pulmonary fibrosis among coal miners are classified, and whether any related datasets exist.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for the production of mortality statistics for England and Wales, using information collected from the death certificate at registration.
Causes of death are certified in most cases by a doctor, who records the sequence of medical conditions and relevant events leading to, or contributing to, the death, based on the deceased's healthcare records and other available information, such as laboratory tests or post-mortem investigation. Some deaths are certified by a coroner who determines the causes of death following an inquest, based on all the available evidence. It is unusual for wider contextual factors such as exposure to coal dust to be recorded among the causes of death.
The occupation of the deceased is provided by the person who registers the death (the informant). Only the current occupation is available on the death certificate. We do not receive information on former occupations. We code the occupation on each death certificate to the ONS Standard Occupation Classification (SOC). Coal Miners are coded to 8122 and 8132 respectively in the 2010 and 2020 versions of SOC. Data for deaths registered from 2023 are coded to SOC2020.
We have published data on deaths by occupation using the 2010 SOC codes.
Deaths registered, by occupation code, 5 year age group and sex, England and Wales: 2021
Deaths registered by occupation, code 5 year age group and sex 2020 in England and Wales
Deaths registered, by occupation code, 5 year age group and sex, 2019, England and Wales
Deaths Registrations by occupation code, 5 year age group and sex, 2018, England and Wales
Deaths registered, by occupation code, 5 year age group and sex, 2011 to 2017, England and Wales
Our mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration. All of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules.
The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as:
a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury
The ICD-10 cause code for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is J84.1. We have not published data for deaths due to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) by occupation for all causes of death.
Information on deaths due to IPF between 2013 and 2023 is accessible from our explorable dataset available on our NOMIS webservice.
Instructions for use of this service:
Select geography (England and Wales, regional, or by local authority)
Select age (all ages, or five-year age bands)
Select gender (total, or male or female)
Select rates (all births, rates, or percentage of population, for example)
Select format (Excel or CSV, for example)
If this does not meet your needs, we could create a custom output for you. Information on the number of deaths registered due to and involving idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis where occupation of the deceased was coal mining, along with other special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales may be available to order, subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs. Please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk for further information.
As the requested information is reasonably accessible via another route, either on the website or via our bespoke route, Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies.