Cancer and polluted work places: a case-control study.

The possible association between selected cancers and polluted work places has been studied in a hospital-based, case-control study. By dividing all jobs in the participants working career into "polluted" and "clean", a crude measure for the total industrial exposure a worker experiences throughout his life was established. Among 103 age-matched, case-control pairs the overall estimated relative risk (RR) for exposed subjects (greater than or equal to 10 years in a polluted work place) of developing cancer compared to nonexposed (less than 10 years in a polluted work place) was 1.1. The only subgroup where a significant difference was found between the cases and the controls was the lung cancer subgroup (RR = 4.0, p = 0.02, two-tailed). When the 30 lung cancer cases were compared to an alternative control group consisting of 60 subjects matched for age and smoking habits, an estimated RR of 4.5 was found. A moderate, but not significant association between lung cancer and definite asbestos exposure was also found (RR: 2.3). As most workers are exposed to a variety of industrial agents throughout their working careers, further development of methods for characterizing combined exposures are needed, both for retrospective and prospective purposes.