Occupational Epidemiology in the Real World: Irving Selikoff, Odds Ratios, and Asbestosis

Real-World Occupational Epidemiology, Part 3: An Aggregate Data Analysis of Selikoff's “20-Year Rule”

“…Typically a 5% level of significance (<0.05) is used, although larger or smaller values may be considered based on practical issues concerning the analysis under consideration. 19 However, when cell values are unknown (such as in Table 2), the chi-squared statistic changes as the value of P 1 changes. In fact, the minimum possible chisquared statistic is 0 (indicating with no association) and there is a quadratic relationship between the chi-squared statistic and P 1 .…”

Real World Occupational Epidemiology, Part 1: Odds Ratios, Relative Risk, and Asbestosis

“…1 From an epidemiological perspective it also represents one of the most important and historically significant case studies in Environmental and Occupational Health (EOH). 2 The sub discipline of EOH which examines and evaluates workplace risks, occupational epidemiology, has itself been evolving as new statistical techniques emerge and the complexities of workplace exposures increase. 3 Nonetheless, three fundamental goals of statistical techniques in EOH are, and have always been, clear: (1) to establish which exposures are related to which disease, (2) to determine in what magnitude they may be related, and (3) to differentiate (or eliminate) whether the results identified are simply due to chance.…”

Measuring ^|^lsquo;Risk^|^rsquo; in Occupational Health Studies: Standard Methods and Some Alternatives for Epidemiological Research

“…Establishing whether a statistically significant relationship actually exists between these variables, and then quantifying it in terms of 'risk', has long been the domain of occupational epidemiology 1) . As human understanding of biological processes progressed throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries, clinicians and practitioners were increasingly able to draw intuitive links from anecdotal reports and individual case studies, thereby leading to disease causation hypotheses and research studies to investigate them 2) .…”