Abstract
Despite the use of large amounts of asbestos in the 1990s, few studies have been conducted in Korea on occupational and environmental asbestos exposure and lung cancer risk. The main aim of this study was to estimate the risk of lung cancer development caused by occupational and environmental asbestos exposures in residents of South Chungcheong Province, where about half of the asbestos mines in Korea operated. We conducted a case-control study, for which the information on asbestos exposure history and demographic characteristics was provided by the Environmental Health Center for asbestos of Soonchunhyang University Cheonan Hospital. After adjusting for all covariates, the odds ratios for lung cancer tended to increase with higher exposure probability for both occupational as well as environmental asbestos. The relative risk of occupational asbestos exposure was higher than that of environmental exposure; the interaction of co-exposure was not statistically significant. The estimated means of the latency period were significantly shorter in participants who were engaged in the production of asbestos-containing products and in those who lived near asbestos industries as compared to other groups.
Highlights
Lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide
The workers who engaged in the production of asbestos-containing products and the residents who lived near asbestos industries had significantly shorter latency periods than other groups
The estimated means of the latency period were significantly shorter in participants who engaged in the production of asbestos-containing products and who lived near asbestos industries than in the other groups
Summary
Lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide. Approximately 2 million people worldwide are diagnosed with lung cancer annually, of which 1.76 million die [1]. Occupational and environmental asbestos exposure and the risk of lung cancer in Korea. The OR was positively associated with higher exposure probability and tended to decrease in groups with higher initial exposure age. The OR did not significantly increase in the exposed group, but tended to increase with a higher exposure probability after adjusting for all covariates. For the group with exposure probability classified as Definite, the OR was 6.21 times that of the unexposed participants (OR = 6.21; 95% CI: 1.61, 24.02). No significant trend was observed in the association between age at first exposure to asbestos and lung cancer. The increased OR was significantly higher in the participants involved in soil cultivation than in the non-experienced group
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