Mortality surveillance and occupational hazards: the Solutia mortality experience 1980-94
James J Collinsa, Susan G Riordanb
a Solutia, 10300 Olive
Boulelvard, St Louis, Missouri 63166, USA, b Monsanto, 700 Chesterfield Parkway North,
Chesterfield, Missouri 63017, USA
Correspondence to: Dr James J Collins james.j.collins{at}solutia.com
Accepted 23 June 2000
OBJECTIVES
Several
investigators argue that company wide mortalities for recent workers
allow early identification of potential workplace hazards. Mortalities
for recent workers were compared with published studies of workers with
specific exposures in the same company to find whether mortality
surveillance results could be used to identify previously unknown
health effects from workplace hazards.
METHODSRelative risks
for causes of death in published substance specific studies at the
plants were compared with the relative risks in the mortality
surveillance of workers 20 or more years after first being employed.
RESULTSAs reported by
other companies, low mortalities were found among workers in the
mortality surveillance. The mortality surveillance reports often found
no increased risk of disease at plants in which substance specific
studies had found no effects. However, disease specific relative risks
were not found by the mortality surveillance predictions of relative
risks in the substance specific studies with increased risk.
CONCLUSIONMortality
surveillance is of limited use for identifying health effects from past
workplace exposures to specific materials. The healthy worker and
survivor effects, the failure to identify subsets of workers exposed to
potentially toxic substances, the typically long induction period
between exposure and disease, and the inability of recent mortality
levels to reflect historical conditions all may make it difficult to
use mortality surveillance to identify workplace hazards. Combining
mortality surveillance with studies of workers with potentially toxic
exposures helps identify occupational hazards.
Keywords: mortality surveillance; occupational cancer; bladder cancer; leukaemia
© 2000 by Occupational and Environmental Medicine
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