gms | German Medical Science

MAINZ//2011: 56. GMDS-Jahrestagung und 6. DGEpi-Jahrestagung

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie e. V.
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Epidemiologie e. V.

26. - 29.09.2011 in Mainz

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Change of exposure response over time and long-term risk of silicosis among a cohort of Chinese pottery workers

Meeting Abstract

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  • Yi Sun - Institut für Arbeitsschutz der Deutschen Gesetzlichen Unfallversicherung (IFA), Sankt Augustin
  • Frank Bochmann - Institut für Arbeitsschutz der Deutschen Gesetzlichen Unfallversicherung (IFA), Sankt Augustin
  • Weihong Chen - Tongji Medical College, Wuhan, China

Mainz//2011. 56. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie (gmds), 6. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Epidemiologie (DGEpi). Mainz, 26.-29.09.2011. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2011. Doc11gmds112

doi: 10.3205/11gmds112, urn:nbn:de:0183-11gmds1121

Published: September 20, 2011

© 2011 Sun et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

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An analysis was conducted among a cohort of Chinese pottery workers to estimate the exposure-response relationship between respirable crystalline silica dust exposure and the incidence of radiographically diagnosed silicosis, and to estimate the long-term risk of developing silicosis up to the age of 65.

The cohort comprised 3250 employees with a median follow-up duration of around 37 years. Incident cases of silicosis were identified via silicosis registries (Chinese X-ray stage I, similar to ILO profusion category 1/1). Individual exposure to respirable crystalline silica dust was estimated based on over 100,000 historical dust measurements. The association between dust exposure, incidence and long-time risk of silicosis was quantified by Poisson regression analysis adjusted for age and smoking.

The risk of silicosis depended not only on the cumulative respirable crystalline silica dust exposures, but also on the time-dependent respirable crystalline silica dust exposure pattern (long-term average concentration, highest annual concentration ever experienced and duration of exposure). A long-term “excess” risk of silicosis of around 1/1000 was calculated among workers with all annual respirable crystalline silica dust concentration estimates less than 0.1 mg/m3.

This study indicates the importance of proper consideration of exposure information in risk quantification in epidemiological studies.