COMMENTARY

Epidemiology

Assessing historical exposure is like solving a mystery

H Kromhout

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr H Kromhout
Environmental and Occupational Health Division, Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University, PO Box 80176, 3508 TD Utrecht, Netherlands; H.Kromhout@iras.uu.nl

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Commentary on the paper by Johansen et al (see page434)

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Keywords: dry cleaning; exposure; perchloroethylene; tetrachloroethylene

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Historical exposure assessment for epidemiological studies has always been a great challenge for occupational hygienists and exposure assessors. In the paper by Johansen and colleagues¹ published in this issue of the journal, the authors describe what they call "history science methods" for exposure assessment for occupational health studies. The paper reads likes a detective story, with this exception that not only the culprits (exposed) have to be identified but also the innocents (non-exposed). Their approach is unconventional, given that they start from very unlikely sources for exposure assessment such as census data, telephone books, and biographies. The census was even the sampling frame, because identifying a cohort of small shop owners and employees through regular means (approaching companies, employer’s organisations, pension funds) was impossible. Instead the authors started with the computerised 1970 Danish census data. Of course these files contained a personal identification number (so typical for the Scandinavian . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Use of history science methods in exposure assessment for occupational health studies

K Johansen, H Tinnerberg, E Lynge
Occup. Environ. Med. 2005 62: 434-441. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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