Dermal exposure to pentachlorophenol was associated with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and kidney cancer, but not with other cancers of a priori interest.

R. A comparison of exposure estimates by worke r rater s and industrial hygienists. Scand J Work Environ Health 1989;15:424-429. The validit y and reliabilit y of nine senior sawmill workers' estimates of frequency, duration, and route s of exposure were compared with individual workers' ratin gs of their own job titles and industrial hygienists' ratings of all job titles in the plant. T he reliability of the senior workers' mean exposure estimat es [group intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.71] compared favo ra bly with tho se of three pairs of hygienists (group ICC =0.57, 0.1\7, and 0.81). The validity of their rat ings was assessed in a comparison with urinary chlorophenate measurements representing 92 % of the job titles in the sawmill. The senior workers ' ratings [coefficient of determination (R') = 0.22] resembled those of two pairs of industrial hygienists (R' = 0.24, 0.22) and was significantly greater than that of the third pair (R' = 0.08). The validity of the self-reports was also low (R, ' = 0.15), but the dif ference was not statistically significan t. Senior workers' exposure rat ings appear to be as effective as the other methods tested .

This study indicates that workers with poor psychosocial working conditions may be at increased risk of both attempted and completed suicide.

OBJECTIVES: This study examined the association between exposure to chlorophenates and the risk of soft tissue sarcoma; non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; Hodgkin's disease; and cancers of the lung, nose, and nasopharynx. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted of 26487 workers employed for at least 1 year between 1950 and 1985 in 11 chlorophenate-using and 3 non-using sawmills in British Columbia, Canada. Exposures by job were ascertained with interviews of senior employees. RESULTS: Probabilistic record linkage to the Canadian Mortality Data Base and the British Columbia Cancer Registry found 4710 deaths between 1950 and 1990, and 1547 incident cases of cancer between 1969 and 1989. None of the cancers of interest had elevated mortality related to chlorophenate exposure. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma incidence (n = 65) increased with increasing chlorophenate exposure hours, yielding the following standardized incidence ratios: less than 120 hours 0.68; 120 to 1999 hours, 0.59; 2000 to 3999 hours, 1.04; 4000 to 9999 hours, 1.02; and 10000 or more hours, 1.30. CONCLUSIONS: These results are consistent with the borderline positive associations seen in other recently reported studies of chlorophenate-exposed workforces.

Objectives The purpose of the study was to determine whether paternal occupational exposure to dioxincontaminated chlorophenols is associated with an increased risk of congenital anomalies or other adverse reproductive outcomes in offspring. Methods As a result of a multistep linkage, 19 675 births between 1952 and 1988 were identified as children of a cohort of 9512 fathers who had worked at least one year in British Columbia sawmills where chlorophenate wood preservatives had been used. A nested case-referent analysis was applied, using conditional logistic regression, with five referents matched per case according to year of birth and gender. Chlorophenate exposure was based on expert raters' estimations of hours of exposure applied to specific time windows prior to birth. Results The offspring of male sawmill workers were at increased risk for developing congenital anomalies of the eye, particularly congenital cataracts; elevated risks for developing anencephaly or spina bifida and congenital anomalies of genital organs were shown according to specific windows of exposure. No associations were found for low birthweight, prematurity, stillbirths, or neonatal deaths. C O~C~U S~O~S The study adds further support to the hypothesis of male-mediated developmental toxicity. Paternal exposure to chlorophenates was associated with the development of certain congenital anomalies in offspring.

BackgroundThe identification of mental health problems early in life can increase the well-being of children and youth. Several studies have reported that youth who experience mental health disorders are also at a greater risk of developing psychopathological conditions later in life, suggesting that the ability of researchers and clinicians to identify mental health problems early in life may help prevent adult psychopathology. Using large-scale administrative data, this study examined whether permanent settlement and within-province migration patterns may be linked to mental health diagnoses among adolescents (15 to 19 years old), young adults (20 to 30 years old), and adults (30 years old and older) who grew up in rural or urban communities or migrated between types of community (N = 8,502).MethodsWe conducted a nested case-control study of the impact of rural compared to urban residence and rural-urban provincial migration patterns on diagnosis of mental health. Conditional logistic regression models were run with the following International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision (ICD-9) mental health diagnoses as the outcomes: neurotic disorders, personality disorder, acute reaction to stress, adjustment reaction, depression, alcohol dependence, and nondependent drug abuse. Analyses were conducted controlling for paternal mental health and sociodemographic characteristics.ResultsMental health diagnoses were selectively associated with stability and migration patterns. Specifically, adolescents and young adults who were born in and grew up in the same rural community were at lower risk of being diagnosed with acute reaction to stress (OR = 0.740) and depression (OR = 0.881) compared to their matched controls who were not born in and did not grow up in the same rural community. Furthermore, adolescents and young adults migrating between rural communities were at lower risk of being diagnosed with adjustment reaction (OR = 0.571) than those not migrating between rural communities. No differences were found for diagnoses of neurotic disorders, personality disorder, alcohol dependence, and nondependent drug abuse.ConclusionsThis study provides some compelling evidence of the protective role of rural environments in the development of specific mental health conditions (i.e., depression, adjustment reaction, and acute reaction to stress) among the children of sawmill workers in Western Canada.

The objective of this study was to determine whether paternal occupational exposure to chlorophenol fungicides and their dioxin contaminants is associated with childhood cancer in the offspring of sawmill workers. We used data from 23,829 British Columbian sawmill workers employed for at least 1 continuous year between 1950 and 1985 in 11 sawmills that used chlorophenates. Probabilistic linkage of the sawmill worker cohort to the provincial marriage and birth files produced an offspring cohort of 19,674 children born at least 1 year after the initiation of employment in the period 1952-1988. We then linked the offspring cohort to the British Columbia Cancer Registry. We included all malignancies in cases younger than 20 years of age that appeared on the cancer registry between 1969 and 1993. We calculated standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) using the British Columbia population as a reference. A nested case-control analysis assessed the effects of paternal cumulative exposure and windows of exposure on the risk of developing cancer in the offspring. We identified 40 cases of cancer during 259,919 person-years of follow-up. The all-cancer SIR was 1.0 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.7-1.4]; the SIR for leukemia was 1.0 (CI, 0.5-1.8); and the SIR for brain cancer was 1.3 (CI, 0.6-2.5). The nested case-control analysis showed slightly increased risks in the highest categories of chlorophenol exposure, although none was statistically significant. Our analyses provide little evidence to support a relationship between the risk of childhood cancer and paternal occupational exposure to chlorophenate fungicides in British Columbian sawmills.

Our aim was to compare risk of lung cancer associated with smoking by gender and histologic type. A total of 30,874 subjects, 44% women, from three prospective population-based studies with initial examinations between 1964 and 1992 were followed until 1994 through the National Cancer Registry. There were 867 cases of lung cancer, 203 among women and 664 among men. Rates among female and male never-smokers were similar, although confidence intervals around rates were wide. Rate ratios (RRs) increased with number of pack-years for both men and women to a maximum of approximately 20 in inhaling smokers with more than 60 pack-years of tobacco exposure. RRs did not differ much between men and women: adjusted for pack-years, age, and study population, the ratio between female and male smokers' RRs of developing lung cancer was 0.8 (95% confidence interval = 0.3-2.1). All histologic types were associated with smoking, with the largest RR seen for squamous cell carcinoma and anaplastic carcinoma. This prospective population-based study does not confirm previous reports from case-control studies of a higher relative risk in women than in men for lung cancer associated with smoking.