COMMENTARY

Epidemiology

Silica: déjà vu all over again?

K Steenland

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr K Steenland
Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA; nsteenl@sph.emory.edu

---

Commentary on the paper by Brown and Rushton (see page 446)

---

Keywords: silica; carcinogenicity; lung cancer; epidemiology

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

Brown and Rushton¹ have conducted a retrospective cohort mortality study of 2700 workers in the industrial sand industry. Work in the industrial sand industry results in exposure to crystalline silica, and the focus of the study was whether exposure to silica causes lung cancer. Retrospective exposure assessment, based on air measurements since 1978, and some assumptions about exposure before then, was used to estimate exposure levels for different jobs in the industry over time. The resulting job-exposure matrix was used to assign estimated exposure levels to each worker and to estimate cumulative silica exposure, which is commonly the exposure measure of interest for chronic diseases such as lung cancer.

Brown and Rushton did not find an excess of lung cancer in this cohort compared to the general population (lung cancer SMR 0.99, 77 deaths), nor did they find any excess silicosis (only two silicosis deaths were observed). Furthermore, they . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Mortality in the UK industrial silica sand industry: 2. A retrospective cohort study

T P Brown, L Rushton
Occup. Environ. Med. 2005 62: 446-452. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Tse, L A, Yu, I T S, Leung, C C, Tam, W, Wong, T W (2007). Mortality from non-malignant respiratory diseases among people with silicosis in Hong Kong: exposure-response analyses for exposure to silica dust. Occup. Environ. Med. 64: 87-92 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Loomis, D. (2005). Work in brief. Occup. Environ. Med. 62: 429-429 [Full Text]  

eLetters:

Read all eLetters

Epidemiological Perspectives on Silica and Health - Report from an International Workshop

Lesley Rushton, et al.

Occup Environ Med Online, 24 Jun 2005 [Full text]