Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Research reports
Airborne PAH's have long been known to cause cancer in
animals and have been widely classified as known human carcinogens.
A review of published reports of occupational epidemiological
studies quantitatively informative to this relationship was carried
out, and a meta-analysis to identify the average and determinants
of lung and bladder cancer risk per unit. Relevant peer reviewed
reports published up to early 2001 were identified systematically
using bibliographic databases. From each study that met the
inclusion criteria, unit relative risk was estimated by loglinear
poisson regression from published tables of risk against estimated
cumulative exposure. Distribution and determinants of unit relative
risks (URRs ) were investigated using standard meta-analytic
methods. On average the URR for lung cancer was 1.20 but this
varied significantly across industries, and for bladder cancer
1.33, with no statistically significant variation by industry or
other putative determinants.
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