Objectives Social position and social mobility are associated with cancer incidence and mortality, yet little is known about their association with mediating factors such as occupational exposures to carcinogens. Our aim was to assess the association between the type of professional trajectory and multiple occupational exposure profiles.

Method Data were extracted from the Giscop93 study (n = 1 009), which is a cohort of cancer patients with (mainly) respiratory tumours. Job histories were reconstructed through interview, then a multi-disciplinary expert group examined the probability of occupational exposure to a list of 54 potentially carcinogenic agents. The typology of professional trajectories was built based on employment stability, employment continuity, job qualification trend, and multiple skills through Multiple Correspondence Analysis followed by Ascending Hierarchical Classification. Association with multiple-exposure profiles was then assessed through multiple logistic regression.

Results Men and women differed in terms of predominant job category over the lifecourse (68,2% of blue-collar-workers among men, 57,3% of employees among women, p < 0.0001). Professional trajectories were grouped in four classes as “stable qualified, employee” (21,3%), “stable manual, independent blue-collar-worker” (24,4%), “stable tiring, no gain in qualification” (30,5%), and “very unstable, precarious” (23,8%). Among men, the last two categories were associated with exposure to at least five different occupational carcinogens (OR_{stable_tiring/stable_qualified}=2,0 [1,3;3,1], OR_{very_unstable/stable_qualified}=2,6 [1,6;4,2]). No such association was found among women.

Conclusions The association found between the type of professional trajectory and multiple occupational exposures among men should be replicated among people not suffering cancer. Forthcoming analysis will investigate the gendered differences observed.