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. 2024 Apr 1;50(3):178-186.
doi: 10.5271/sjweh.4140. Epub 2024 Jan 24.

Respirable crystalline silica and lung cancer in community-based studies: impact of job-exposure matrix specifications on exposure-response relationships

Johan Ohlander  1 , Hans Kromhout, Roel Vermeulen, Lützen Portengen, Benjamin Kendzia, Barbara Savary, Domenico Cavallo, Andrea Cattaneo, Enrica Migliori, Lorenzo Richiardi, Nils Plato, Heinz-Erich Wichmann, Stefan Karrasch, Dario Consonni, Maria Teresa Landi, Neil E Caporaso, Jack Siemiatycki, Per Gustavsson, Karl-Heinz Jöckel, Wolfgang Ahrens, Hermann Pohlabeln, Guillermo Fernández-Tardón, David Zaridze, Jolanta Lissowska Jolanta Lissowska, Beata Swiatkowska Beata Swiatkowska, John K Field John K Field, John R McLaughlin, Paul A Demers, Tamas Pandics, Francesco Forastiere, Eleonora Fabianova, Miriam Schejbalova, Lenka Foretova, Vladimir Janout, Dana Mates, Christine Barul, Thomas Brüning, Thomas Behrens, Kurt Straif, Joachim Schüz, Ann Olsson, Susan Peters
Affiliations

Respirable crystalline silica and lung cancer in community-based studies: impact of job-exposure matrix specifications on exposure-response relationships

Johan Ohlander et al. Scand J Work Environ Health. .

Abstract

Objectives: The quantitative job-exposure matrix SYN-JEM consists of various dimensions: job-specific estimates, region-specific estimates, and prior expert ratings of jobs by the semi-quantitative DOM-JEM. We analyzed the effect of different JEM dimensions on the exposure-response relationships between occupational silica exposure and lung cancer risk to investigate how these variations influence estimates of exposure by a quantitative JEM and associated health endpoints.

Methods: Using SYN-JEM, and alternative SYN-JEM specifications with varying dimensions included, cumulative silica exposure estimates were assigned to 16 901 lung cancer cases and 20 965 controls pooled from 14 international community-based case-control studies. Exposure-response relationships based on SYN-JEM and alternative SYN-JEM specifications were analyzed using regression analyses (by quartiles and log-transformed continuous silica exposure) and generalized additive models (GAM), adjusted for age, sex, study, cigarette pack-years, time since quitting smoking, and ever employment in occupations with established lung cancer risk.

Results: SYN-JEM and alternative specifications generated overall elevated and similar lung cancer odds ratios ranging from 1.13 (1st quartile) to 1.50 (4th quartile). In the categorical and log-linear analyses SYN-JEM with all dimensions included yielded the best model fit, and exclusion of job-specific estimates from SYN-JEM yielded the poorest model fit. Additionally, GAM showed the poorest model fit when excluding job-specific estimates.

Conclusion: The established exposure-response relationship between occupational silica exposure and lung cancer was marginally influenced by varying the dimensions of SYN-JEM. Optimized modelling of exposure-response relationships will be obtained when incorporating all relevant dimensions, namely prior rating, job, time, and region. Quantitative job-specific estimates appeared to be the most prominent dimension for this general population JEM.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors do not declare any conflict of interest. TB, BK and TBr, as staff of the Institute for Prevention and Occupational Medicine (IPA), are employed at the “Berufsgenossenschaft Rohstoffe und chemische Industrie” (BG RCI), a public body, which is a member of the study’s main sponsor, the German Social Accident Insurance. IPA is an independent research institute of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The authors are independent from the German Social Accident Insurance in study design, access to the collected data, responsibility for data analysis and interpretation, and the right to publish.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Exposure–response curves for cumulative silica exposure in relation to lung cancer risk based on general additive models (GAM), as per the original SYN-JEM (JEM 1), and alternative SYN-JEM specifications with varying dimensions of SYN-JEM included (JEM 2–5).
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