COMMENTARIES
Genetics
Genetics and occupational health and safety
Correspondence to:
Dr H Vainio, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41 a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland; harri.vainio@ttl.fi
Commentary on the editorial by Schulte (see page 717)
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A recent study in China concluded that the incidences of neurasthenia and of ultrasonographic abnormalities in the livers of vinyl chloride-exposed workers increased with increasing cumulative exposure dose.1 This is an important finding, especially as the exposure to vinyl chloride studied was below the current Chinese permissible occupational limit. The same study also reported that the CYP2E1 c1c2/c2c2 genotype was significantly associated with liver damage (OR 3.3).
How should occupational health and safety professionals use these data? A further decrease in the occupational health standard for vinyl chloride in China should be the immediate reply. How about the data on polymorphic CYP2E1?
We are on the threshold of a new revolution in understanding the interaction of genes with the environment. The relative roles of heritable and environmental causes in occupational hazards are an important scientific issue, with many practical consequences. Traditional geneticists have emphasised genes, while epidemiologists have
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
- The contributions of genetics and genomics to occupational safety and health
- P A Schulte
Occup. Environ. Med. 2007 64: 717-718.[Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
