SYN-JEM: A Quantitative Job-Exposure Matrix for Five Lung Carcinogens

Abstract

We estimated time-, job-, and region-specific exposure levels for four (asbestos, chromium-VI, nickel, and RCS) out of five considered lung carcinogens. Through statistical modeling of large amounts of personal occupational exposure measurement data we were able to derive a quantitative JEM to be used in community-based studies.

Occupational exposure to pesticides as a possible risk factor for the development of chronic diseases in humans

“…Another tool in the assessment of the risk due to pesticide exposure is represented by the application of indirect measurements, such as expert's judgment, job questionnaires, calendars and job-exposure matrices (JEMs) (44–46). Even in this case, care must be given to avoid worker's misclassification due to the said great difference in the degree of exposure depending on the worker's task.…”

New Opportunities in Exposure Assessment of Occupational Epidemiology: Use of Measurements to Aid Exposure Reconstruction in Population-Based Studies

“…To provide a mechanism to assign measurement-based estimates to occupations and time periods that had no or limited measurement data, a statistical model framework was developed to calibrate ordinal expert-based JEM intensity estimates to a concentration scale across time and applied to eight chemical agents [5, 6, 24, 25••]. The framework combined JEM ratings and measurements in a mixed-effects model that treated the JEM rating and calendar year as fixed effects and treated group-level variables (e.g., occupation, industry and/or region) as random effects to account for clustering and correlations within the data.…”

“…The above mixed-effects model framework was used to assess exposure to five agents in the SYNERGY case-control study of lung cancer [24, 25••] and for three agents in the Shanghai Women’s Health Study, a prospective cohort of Shanghai women [5, 6]. The Shanghai Women’s Health Study models used a database of health and safety inspection area air measurements collected over more than four decades, with >60,000 benzene measurements [5] and >10,000 lead fume and >5,000 lead dust measurements [6].…”

“…This inspection database provided no ancillary data other than job, industry, sample location, and factory name. The SYNERGY models were developed using the ExpoSYN database, which included 356,551 measurements from 19 countries for five chemical agents that spanned more than five decades, with ancillary data on job characteristics and measurement information [11, 24, 25••]. The ExpoSYN measurements were compiled from national exposure databases (90%), research institutes (8%) and industry-specific databases (1%) [11].…”

“…The ExpoSYN measurements were compiled from national exposure databases (90%), research institutes (8%) and industry-specific databases (1%) [11]. Group-specific estimates derived from the applications of this model framework provided greater contrast between individuals in the final exposure estimates than could be obtained by using only the expert JEM ratings, with greater contrast observed when more measurements were available [5, 6, 25••]. Varying uses of these models to derive group-specific estimates, calibrated JEM estimates, and uncalibrated JEM estimates on a concentration scale resulted in robust exposure-response associations and similar model fits in sensitivity analyses that compared the lung cancer risk from respirable crystalline silica exposure [26] and risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma from benzene exposure [27••].…”