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Update of the mortality experience of employees with occupational exposure to 1,2‐dibromo‐3‐chloropropane (DBCP)
Author(s) -
Olsen Geary W.,
Bodner Kenneth M.,
Stafford Beth A.,
Cartmill Janice B.,
Gondek Michael R.
Publication year - 1995
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.4700280309
Subject(s) - medicine , cohort , relative risk , confidence interval , cohort study , demography , lung cancer , confounding , stomach cancer , cancer , surgery , sociology
DBCP (1,2‐dibromo‐3‐chloropropane), a nematocide, was used in the United States from the mid‐1950s until 1977. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) restricted and eventually banned its use after the 1977 discovery of DBCP‐induced sterility in production workers. The present study is an update of the mortality (1957–1989) experience of a cohort of 548 male employees who had potential for exposure in the production and formulation of DBCP. While adjusting for age, calendar‐year, and pay status of all other Midland‐area Dow Chemical male employees, there were 68 total observed deaths in the cohort compared to 72.1 expected (Mantel Haenszel Relative Risk 0.9, 95% Confidence Interval 0.7–1.2) and 19 deaths from all malignancies compared to 19.0 expected (RR 1.0, 95% CI 0.6–1.6). Of the a priori anatomic cancer sites of interest, there were no deaths from stomach, liver, kidney, testes, or nasal cavity cancers. Altogether, there were 7 deaths from lung cancer compared to 6.6 expected (RR 1.1, 95% CI 0.5–2.3). Among the 81 employees with exposure categorized as direct for 1 or more years, there were 3 observed lung cancer deaths compared to 0.9 expected (RR 3.3, 95% CI 1.1–9.6). Smoking was a confounding factor in the interpretation of this observation. Although the present analysis nearly doubled the number of person‐years from the original study, the conclusions remain limited by the cohort's size and duration of follow‐up.