Assessment of occupational exposures is a crucial factor in evaluating dose-response relationships and most human population-based studies conducted by the Branch have an extensive exposure assessment component. Major assessment efforts in cohort studies have involved exposures to pesticides, benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and diesel exhaust fumes, and to a broad range of exposures in a cohort study of women in Shanghai and shipyard workers. Cross-sectional studies are being conducted to study the effect of benzene, diesel exhaust, trichloroethylene, and atrazine on genotoxic, immune, and hormonal parameters. In the case-control design, jobs have been evaluated for a wide variety of exposures, including solvents (including chlorinated hydrocarbons, aromatic, and other solvents), metals (arsenic, chromium, cadmium, lead), electromagnetic fields, polychlorinated biphenyls, dusts (wood dust and other types) , asbestos, formaldehyde, physical activity, nitrosoamines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, gasoline and diesel exhausts, aromatic amines, and pesticides. These exposures have been evaluated in studies of cancer of the bladder, brain, breast, kidney, lung, larynx, and the lymphatic and hemtopoietic system, and of childhood brain cancer, germ cell tumor cancer, and leukemia Ewings sarcoma and possible associations with parental occupations. Methodologic studies are also conducted to improve exposure assessment techniques and to understand exposure patterns, such as peak exposures. A study has been conducted in Shanghai to evaluate assessments made from detailed occupational questionnaires with air measurements. A report describing the exposure assessment procedures for evaluating EMF exposures in a brain cancer case-control study has been published. Reports describing the occurrences of pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, chlorinated and aromatic solvents, wood dust, lead, cadmium, and nitrosoamines are being prepared. Detailed questionnaires have been developed for several case-control studies: a kidney cancer study in the US, a bladder cancer study in New England, a NHL study in the US, and a bladder cancer study in Spain, and the recently launced AsiaLymph Study. A comparison of assessments to pesticides has been compared to pesticide metabolites in the urine. Important determinants of exposure to 2,4-D has been evaluated using urinary levels. Historical benzene and lead exposure estimates have been developed using a novel framework that combines job-exposure matrices with databases of inspection measurements to predict exposure for a population-based cohort of women in Shanghai. Data mining models have been used to extract decision rules from questionnaire responses and previously assessed exposure metrics for occupational diesel exhaust exposure so that the decision rules can be used in subsequent studies. The same data mining approaches is being used for other agents, including lead and chlorinated solvents. An algorithm-based approach that efficiently links expert-based exposure decisions to participants responses to exposure-oriented modules was developed to estimate occupational diesel exhaust exposure and was compared to estimates from an expert review of each individual job. Exposure estimates for lead and cadmium exposure are being developed for the kidney cancer study. Occupational questionnaire data was used to evaluate gender differences in work tasks and exposure within men and women reporting the same job title. A software program to automatically assign occupation codes based on free-text entries of job title is being developed to improve the efficiency of conducting occupational epidemiology.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Type
Investigator-Initiated Intramural Research Projects (ZIA)
Project #
1ZIACP010122-19
Application #
8938225
Study Section
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
Budget End
Support Year
19
Fiscal Year
2014
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
State
Country
Zip Code
Su, Feng-Chiao; Friesen, Melissa C; Stefaniak, Aleksandr B et al. (2018) Exposures to Volatile Organic Compounds among Healthcare Workers: Modeling the Effects of Cleaning Tasks and Product Use. Ann Work Expo Health 62:852-870
Friesen, Melissa C; Wheeler, David C; Vermeulen, Roel et al. (2016) Combining Decision Rules from Classification Tree Models and Expert Assessment to Estimate Occupational Exposure to Diesel Exhaust for a Case-Control Study. Ann Occup Hyg 60:467-78
Russ, Daniel E; Ho, Kwan-Yuet; Colt, Joanne S et al. (2016) Computer-based coding of free-text job descriptions to efficiently identify occupations in epidemiological studies. Occup Environ Med 73:417-24
Lan, Qing; Vermeulen, Roel; Dai, Yufei et al. (2015) Occupational exposure to diesel engine exhaust and alterations in lymphocyte subsets. Occup Environ Med 72:354-9
Friesen, Melissa C; Shortreed, Susan M; Wheeler, David C et al. (2015) Using hierarchical cluster models to systematically identify groups of jobs with similar occupational questionnaire response patterns to assist rule-based expert exposure assessment in population-based studies. Ann Occup Hyg 59:455-66
Friesen, Melissa C; Locke, Sarah J; Chen, Yu-Cheng et al. (2015) Historical occupational trichloroethylene air concentrations based on inspection measurements from shanghai, china. Ann Occup Hyg 59:62-78
Koh, Dong-Hee; Locke, Sarah J; Chen, Yu-Cheng et al. (2015) Lead exposure in US worksites: A literature review and development of an occupational lead exposure database from the published literature. Am J Ind Med 58:605-16
Stenehjem, Jo S; Friesen, Melissa C; Eggen, Tone et al. (2015) Self-reported Occupational Exposures Relevant for Cancer among 28,000 Offshore Oil Industry Workers Employed between 1965 and 1999. J Occup Environ Hyg 12:458-68
Wheeler, David C; Archer, Kellie J; Burstyn, Igor et al. (2015) Comparison of ordinal and nominal classification trees to predict ordinal expert-based occupational exposure estimates in a case-control study. Ann Occup Hyg 59:324-35
Chen, Yu-Cheng; Coble, Joseph B; Deziel, Nicole C et al. (2014) Reliability and validity of expert assessment based on airborne and urinary measures of nickel and chromium exposure in the electroplating industry. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 24:622-8

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