Risk of lung cancer associated with occupational exposure to mineral wools: updating knowledge from a french population-based case-control study, the ICARE study

Abstract

Objectives: To assess the risk of lung cancer associated with exposure to mineral wools (MWs), while taking into account smoking, asbestos, and crystalline silica exposures.

Methods: The analyses were restricted to men (1350 cases and 1912 controls). Lifelong occupational history was collected. MWs and asbestos exposures were assessed, using task-exposure matrices and silica exposure, a job-exposure matrix.

Results: We observed consistent not-significant increased risks of lung cancer of the same order of magnitude among workers exposed to high levels of MWs (odds ratio, 1.4; 95% confidence interval: 0.9 to 2.2; for highest quartile of the Cumulative Exposure Index).

Conclusions: These results do not allow to draw firm conclusion about a carcinogenic effect of MWs on the lung, but they cannot exclude it. Given the high number of potentially exposed workers, it will be necessary to replicate them in a future further removed from the asbestos ban.