Heath C W
Environ Health Perspect. 1983 Feb;48:3-7. doi: 10.1289/ehp.83483.
Epidemiologic studies are required for assessing health risks related to toxic waste exposure. Since the settings in which such studies must be performed are extremely diverse, epidemiologic approaches must be versatile. For any particular study, three fundamental requirements are to assess what toxic materials are present, understand how human exposure may occur, and objectively measure possible biologic effects. In assessing links between exposure and disease, epidemiologists must be particularly aware of: expected disease frequencies in relation to the size of populations studied, implications of long or varied disease latencies for study design and competing causes of disease and associated confounding variables. These concepts are illustrated by discussion of epidemiologic studies related to the Love Canal toxic waste dump site in Niagara Falls, NY.
评估与接触有毒废物相关的健康风险需要进行流行病学研究。由于必须开展此类研究的环境极为多样，因此流行病学方法必须具有通用性。对于任何一项具体研究而言，有三个基本要求，即评估存在哪些有毒物质、了解人类接触可能如何发生，以及客观衡量可能的生物学效应。在评估接触与疾病之间的联系时，流行病学家必须特别注意：与所研究人群规模相关的预期疾病发生率、疾病潜伏期长或变化多样对研究设计的影响，以及疾病的竞争病因和相关混杂变量。通过讨论与纽约尼亚加拉瀑布城拉夫运河有毒废物倾倒场相关的流行病学研究来阐述这些概念。
