Assessment of occupational exposures is a crucial factor in evaluating dose-response relationships and most studies conducted by the Section have an extensive exposure assessment component. Major efforts in cohort studies have involved exposures to acrylonitrile (AN), butadiene, benzene and other solvents, pesticides, diesel fumes, and silica. In some case-control designs, jobs have been evaluated for a wide variety of exposures, including chlorinated hydrocarbons and other solvents, metals, silica, wood, other dusts, asbestos, formaldehyde, electromagnetic fields, physical activity, nitrosamines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and pesticides. These exposures have been evaluated in studies of cancer of the peritoneum, breast, kidney, colon, stomach, nasopharynx, esophagus, pancreas, prostate, rectum, lung, brain, and leukemia and multiple myeloma. Methodologic studies are also conducted. An evaluation of exposure assessment methods used in an AN cohort study found a bias of less than 30% between the estimates and actual monitoring data. A strong exposure-response relationship found between benzene exposure and benzene poisoning in a study of Chinese workers provided an indirect validation of the estimation method. Job exposure matrices (JEM) assigning a level, probability, and exposure profiles have been developed for 10 occupational exposures. Future efforts include continued assessment of diesel exposures for a cohort of miners and pesticides among agricultural workers and various exposures for case-control studies of multiple myeloma and cancers of the lung, pancreas, esophagus, prostate, and brain; developing a computer program for exposure assessment in cohort studies; assessing dust exposures to farmers in a study of stomach cancer; and developing JEMs for new exposures. Several efforts are underway for identifying the optimal exposure index, including investigating the mechanistic effect of lung cancer, silicosis and silica, and use of genetic susceptibility markers in estimating the biologic effective dose, the role of metabolic activity, and duration of contact on exposure-response relationships with organic solvents.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Type
Intramural Research (Z01)
Project #
1Z01CP010122-01
Application #
2456745
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (EEB)
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
Budget End
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
1996
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
State
Country
United States
Zip Code
Friesen, Melissa C; Bassig, Bryan A; Vermeulen, Roel et al. (2017) Evaluating Exposure-Response Associations for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma with Varying Methods of Assigning Cumulative Benzene Exposure in the Shanghai Women's Health Study. Ann Work Expo Health 61:56-66
Locke, Sarah J; Deziel, Nicole C; Koh, Dong-Hee et al. (2017) Evaluating predictors of lead exposure for activities disturbing materials painted with or containing lead using historic published data from U.S. workplaces. Am J Ind Med 60:189-197
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
Park, D U; Friesen, M C; Roh, H S et al. (2015) Estimating retrospective exposure of household humidifier disinfectants. Indoor Air 25:631-40
DellaValle, Curt T; Purdue, Mark P; Ward, Mary H et al. (2015) Validity of expert assigned retrospective estimates of occupational polychlorinated biphenyl exposure. Ann Occup Hyg 59:609-15
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
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
Locke, Sarah J; Colt, Joanne S; Stewart, Patricia A et al. (2014) Identifying gender differences in reported occupational information from three US population-based case-control studies. Occup Environ Med 71:855-64
Friesen, Melissa C; Locke, Sarah J; Tornow, Carina et al. (2014) Systematically extracting metal- and solvent-related occupational information from free-text responses to lifetime occupational history questionnaires. Ann Occup Hyg 58:612-24

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