Historical cohort study of US man-made vitreous fiber production workers: III. Analysis of exposure-weighted measures of respirable fibers and formaldehyde in the nested case-control study of respiratory system cancer.

Abstract

The most recent findings of our nested case-control study of respiratory system cancer (RSC) among male fiberglass workers showed some evidence of elevated RSC risk associated with non-baseline levels of average intensity of exposure (AIE) to respirable fibers (RFib). When adjusted for smoking, this was not statistically significant, and no trend was apparent with increasing levels of exposure. Similar findings for RSC were noted for both cumulative exposure (Cum) and AIE to formaldehyde (FOR). In this reanalysis of our nested case-control study, we explored a possible exposure-response relationship between RSC and exposure to RFib or FOR using exposure weighting as an alternative characterization of exposure. Because of the uncertainties in selecting an appropriate exposure-weighting scheme, a range of plausible time lags and unlagged/lagged time windows was considered. As in the initial analysis of the nested case-control study, RFib and FOR exposures were categorized at the deciles of the RSC case distribution. For none of the exposure weighting schemes considered did we observe an increasing RSC risk with increasing levels of RFib_Cum or RFib_AIE. The exposure-weighted estimated risk ratios (RR) for both RFib_Cum and RFib_AIE were generally lower than those obtained from an unweighted model. For FOR_Cum, RRs were generally lower for the time-lagged and unlagged time window models than for the unweighted models, although some decile-specific RRs were higher for the lagged time window models. The exposure-weighted RRs for FOR_AIE were generally lower than the unweighted RRs for all of the weighting schemes considered. This reanalysis in terms of categorized exposures reveals no exposure-response relationships that were undetected in the original analysis where unweighted exposure measures were used. In the schemes considered, exposure weighting generally reduced the estimated risk of RSC.