O23.1 SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS OF MORTALITY AND CANCER INCIDENCE AMONG WORKERS IN THE TEXTILES, FIBRES, AND FABRICS SECTOR OF THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

K. Abrams¹, J. Fenty², D. R. Jones¹, L. S. Levy², L. Rushton², A. J. Sutton¹, F. C. Warren².¹Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK; ²MRC Institute for Environment and Health, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

Introduction: An update of a meta-analysis of cohort studies of chemical workers¹ is being carried out for the American Chemistry Council. This paper reports the results for one subsector of the chemical manufacturing industry.

Methods: Papers published in English from 1966 to 2003 are included. A database has been developed for systematic recording of extracted information, including location and time of the study, and definition of the cohort, comparison population and confounders. The analysis, carried out in STATA, includes investigation of heterogeneity and publication bias.

Results: Fourteen unique cohorts were identified: 6,3,3 and 2 from the rayon, cellulose, acrylic fiber and polyester manufacturing industry sectors respectively. The pooled Standardised Mortality Ratio (SMR) for all causes of death for all 14 studies together was 0.90 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.82-0.99) using a random effects model, with significant heterogeneity between studies. The all cause SMR for the rayon industry was higher than those from the other industry sectors, due mainly to elevated risks from cardiovascular disease, in particular coronary heart disease (pooled SMR 1.16, 95%CI 1.04 to 1.29). Four rayon sector studies investigated exposure response but used widely differing exposure categories.

Discussion: Our investigation has demonstrated the need to take into account toxicological aspects in defining appropriate industry, chemical and process subgroups and has confirmed and quantified the risk of CHD with exposure to carbon disulphide, the main exposure of concern in the rayon …