|
Work
In Some Industries Linked to Cancer
NEW
YORK (Reuters Health) - What you do for a living may affect your
risk of brain cancer, researchers report.
People with
brain cancer were more likely to work in certain occupations than
similarly aged people without brain cancer, according to results
of a new study.
A team of
researchers led by Dr. Tongzhang Zheng of Yale University in New
Haven, Connecticut, detected a link between an increased risk
of a type of brain cancer called glioma in employees in several
industries, including agriculture, rubber and plastic manufacturing
and the production of electronic equipment.
Zheng's team
compared 412 Iowa residents who were diagnosed with glioma between
1984 and 1987 with 2,434 cancer-free individuals who were matched
by age and sex. In interviews with the participants or their next
of kin, the researchers asked what jobs they had held for at least
5 years since turning 16.
Compared to
cancer-free men, men with glioma were more likely to have been
employed in several occupations, including plumbing, heating and
air conditioning, roofing and sheet metalworking, rubber and plastic
manufacturing and gasoline stations, the authors report in the
April issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
For women,
the riskiest jobs were in agriculture, the apparel and textile
industry, electrical and electronic production, and department
stores and other retail stores, the report indicates. For most
of these jobs, women's risk increased the longer they had been
employed in the field.
``We observed
several statistically significant associations between employment
in certain industries/occupations and brain gliomas,'' Zheng and
his colleagues write.
``An increased
risk of brain cancer for workers in these industries could be
due to their exposures to pesticides, solvents, dyes and formaldehyde,
metal fumes and other chemical or physical cancer-causing agents,
since some...have been associated with brain cancer risk,'' Zheng
said in a press release.
But the findings
do not prove that there is a link between working in certain fields
and brain glioma, according to the Yale researcher. ``More studies
are needed because it could also be due to chance,'' he said.
In the report,
Zheng's team points out that brain cancer has been on the rise
in many industrialized countries, particularly among the elderly.
Better access to medical care and improved diagnosis of brain
cancer may account for some of the increase, but improvements
in medicine do not fully explain the trend, the researchers report.
SOURCE:
Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2001;43:333-
Reference
Source 89
For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick
Prevention Resources".
|
