Introduction Occupational exposures are related to occupational diseases burden and increased susceptibility to health issues. The joint assessment of occupational exposure and disease outcome is the key to accelerate breakthroughs in occupational health research.

Objectives Occupational data including coding of occupations and exposure assessment from a large population cohort such as CARTaGENE may help the research community in uncovering workplace-related health disparities.

Methods CARTaGENE is the largest prospective cohort in Quebec with 43,000 participants recruited among the general population aged 40–69 years at baseline. Approximately 10,000 participants filled out an occupational history questionnaire and data were then coded to create a job titles and industry types database. Then, the CANJEM matrix was applied to assign exposure to 258 chemical agents based on occupations (probability and median dose of exposure).

Results The 10,895 CARTaGENE participants reported a total of 21,612 jobs, 45% were held by men and 55% by women. For 1,253 jobs (5.8%) occupation code in the NOC 2011 system was impossible to assign because of lacking information. The majority of jobs were in white collar occupations (18.97%). Among the most prevalent exposures (>10% jobs having probability of exposure >25%) in the cohort were solvents, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, cleaning agents, biocides, engine emissions and aliphatic alcohols. Overall, 18 agents have an overall prevalence greater than 5%, while a further 64 agents have a prevalence greater that 1%.

Conclusion Such data is relevant from a public health perspective that uses a population-based approach. CARTaGENE has the advantage to integrate a rich collection of data on each participant such as health questionnaires (diseases, lifestyle), physical measures (blood pressure, spirometry), biochemical data (triglyceride, creatinine), genetic data that could be combined to occupational history data. Ultimately, this public resource available to researchers worldwide allows to carry out further research on specific diseases or exposures conditions.