Occupational exposure to nanomaterials and biomarkers in exhaled air and urine: Insights from the NanoExplore international cohort

Occupational Exposure to Metal-Based Nanomaterials: A Possible Relationship between Chemical Composition and Oxidative Stress Biomarkers

“…In this work, the main outcome was fixed by the analysis of the possible asso between NM exposure, represented by PCN and LDSA measurements, and some For this specific work, we decided to maintain the original exposure classification of the workers, thus analyzing only the high exposures vs. the control group, excluding the low-exposure subjects from the analysis. The descriptive general analyses were reported elsewhere [25], but for the foreplay and descriptive analyses referred to in this work, the distributions of quantitative variables were summarized with means ± SD, medians, and minimum and maximum values, while categorical variables were presented as number and percentage. As the statistical distribution of some quantitative parameters was found to be non-Gaussian (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test), non-parametric tests were used to assess between-group differences (Mann-Whitney U test).…”

“…In this work, the main outcome was fixed by the analysis of the possible associations between NM exposure, represented by PCN and LDSA measurements, and some urinary biomarkers of exposure, i.e., urinary metal concentrations, and early biological effects, such as TAP concentrations. Table 1 summarizes the main characteristics of the sample extracted from the cohort described previously [25]. Non-parametric correlation analyses were performed between the exposure data, urinary concentrations of nanosized metals, and OS biomarkers.…”

“…This work is based on sampling and data gathered in the framework of the multicenter prospective cohort study “NanoExplore Project” [EU LIFE17 Grant ENV/GR/000285] [ 25 ], which aimed to investigate the association between occupational exposure to NMs and different biomarkers in workers within the European Union and Switzerland. In this work, within this main and general aim, we assessed the association between nanoparticle exposure and some urinary metals and a metalloid excreted with urine, namely Aluminum (Al), Titanium (Ti), and Chromium (Cr) and Silica (Si).…”

“…All the subjects provided written informed consent to participate. The harmonized protocol, the cohort characteristics, the recruitment procedure, the study design, and the preliminary results have been reported elsewhere [ 25 , 26 , 27 ].…”

“…Possible adverse health effects can result from additional sources of metal NMs, thus increasing their body burden. This can occur especially in occupational settings, where the mass of airborne particles, instead of more appropriate metrics, such as the particle number concentration, is still considered [ 7 , 25 ].…”