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Estimation of occupational cosmic radiation exposure among airline personnel: Agreement between a job‐exposure matrix, aggregate, and individual dose estimates
Author(s) -
Talibov Madar,
Salmelin Raili,
LehtinenJacks Susanna,
Auvinen Anssi
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
american journal of industrial medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.7
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1097-0274
pISSN - 0271-3586
DOI - 10.1002/ajim.22705
Subject(s) - medicine , job exposure matrix , occupational exposure , radiation exposure , estimation , cosmic cancer database , environmental health , occupational stress , occupational medicine , matrix (chemical analysis) , cosmic ray , nuclear medicine , composite material , nuclear physics , clinical psychology , physics , materials science , management , astrophysics , economics
Background Job‐exposure matrices (JEM) are used for exposure assessment in occupational studies, but they can involve errors. We assessed agreement between the Nordic Occupational Cancer Studies JEM (NOCCA‐JEM) and aggregate and individual dose estimates for cosmic radiation exposure among Finnish airline personnel. Methods Cumulative cosmic radiation exposure for 5,022 airline crew members was compared between a JEM and aggregate and individual dose estimates. Results The NOCCA‐JEM underestimated individual doses. Intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.37, proportion of agreement 64%, kappa 0.46 compared with individual doses. Higher agreement was achieved with aggregate dose estimates, that is annual medians of individual doses and estimates adjusted for heliocentric potentials. Conclusions The substantial disagreement between NOCCA‐JEM and individual dose estimates of cosmic radiation may lead to exposure misclassification and biased risk estimates in epidemiological studies. Using aggregate data may provide improved estimates. Am. J. Ind. Med. 60:386–393, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.