Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
Curr Allergy Asthma Rep. 2023 Jun;23(6):299-311. doi: 10.1007/s11882-023-01078-x. Epub 2023 May 11.
Burning of petroleum products has been consistently associated with adverse respiratory health effects. Combustion of crude oil, specifically, produces toxic byproducts, but there have been relatively few studies of health effects. Burning of crude oil is increasingly employed as a means of mitigating environmental disasters despite the potential health risks to workers involved in clean-up efforts. Here, we review epidemiological studies of respiratory effects following unique crude oil burning events to (1) characterize respiratory health effects from this nontraditional occupational exposure and (2) identify approaches used to characterize exposures that could be applied to future disaster-related studies.
We searched PubMed and EMBASE for references from inception to January 30, 2023. We also manually screened references cited in eligible articles. We identified 14 eligible publications. Our review suggests that exposure to crude oil combustion has adverse respiratory effects, including reduced lung function and increased occurrence of respiratory symptoms and disease. However, the evidence is inconsistent, and quality of data varied across studies. While some studies used quantitative, modeled exposure estimates, most used self-reported proxies of exposure. Although disasters involving crude oil combustion are relatively rare, limited evidence suggests that some worker populations may be at risk for respiratory effects from burning exposures in disaster settings. Future studies that use improved exposure assessment methods (e.g., personal monitors, remote sensing data) may help further quantify the respiratory risk from crude oil burning exposures.
燃烧石油产品与不良呼吸健康影响一直相关。具体而言，燃烧原油会产生有毒副产品，但关于健康影响的研究相对较少。尽管参与清理工作的工人存在潜在健康风险，但原油燃烧作为减轻环境灾害的一种手段，其应用越来越多。在这里，我们回顾了独特的原油燃烧事件后呼吸影响的流行病学研究，（1）描述这种非传统职业暴露的呼吸健康影响，（2）确定用于描述可能应用于未来灾害相关研究的暴露的方法。
我们从建立到 2023 年 1 月 30 日在 PubMed 和 EMBASE 上搜索参考文献。我们还手动筛选了合格文章中引用的参考文献。我们确定了 14 篇合格出版物。我们的综述表明，暴露于原油燃烧会产生不良呼吸影响，包括肺功能下降以及呼吸症状和疾病的发生率增加。然而，证据并不一致，而且研究之间的数据质量也存在差异。虽然有些研究使用了定量的、模型化的暴露估计值，但大多数研究使用了自我报告的暴露替代物。尽管涉及原油燃烧的灾害相对较少，但有限的证据表明，一些工人群体可能面临灾害环境中燃烧暴露导致呼吸影响的风险。未来使用改进的暴露评估方法（例如，个人监测器、遥感数据）的研究可能有助于进一步量化原油燃烧暴露对呼吸的风险。
