Objectives The CANJEM general population job-exposure matrix summarises expert evaluations of 31 673 jobs from four population-based case-control studies of cancer conducted in Montreal, Canada. Intensity in each CANJEM cell is represented as relative distributions of the ordinal (low, medium, high) ratings of jobs assigned by the experts. We aimed to estimate quantitative concentrations for CANJEM cells using Canadian historical measurements, taking exposure to wood dust as an example.

Methods Wood dust measurements came from the Canadian Workplace Exposure Database (CWED). We selected personal and area samples in occupations (2011 Canadian National Occupational Classification) with a non-zero exposure probability in CANJEM in period 1930–2005 (minimum 10 samples/occupation in CWED). Concentrations were modelled with sampling duration, year and type, source database and proportion of jobs at medium and high intensity in cells (fixed effects), and occupations (random effects).

Results 5170 samples from 31 occupations spanning 1981–2003 were retained. Estimated geometric mean (GM) concentrations for a cell with all jobs at medium or high intensity were respectively 1.3 and 2.3 times higher than a cell with all jobs at low intensity. An overall trend of −5%/year in exposure was observed. Predicted GMs for 8 hours, breathing zone and year 1989 for CANJEM cells associated with exposure ranged 0.49–1.67 mg/m3.

Conclusions The model provided estimates of wood dust concentrations for any CANJEM cell with exposure, even for those without measurements by using the calibrated intensity ratings. This framework could be implemented for other agents represented in both CANJEM and CWED.