Background

In a previous study, we estimated exposure prevalence and the number of workers exposed to carcinogens by industry in Korea. The present study aimed to evaluate the optimal exposure intensity indicators of airborne lead exposure by comparing to blood lead measurements for the future development of the carcinogen exposure intensity database.

Methods

Data concerning airborne lead measurements and blood lead levels were collected from nationwide occupational exposure databases, compiled between 2015 and 2016. Summary statistics, including the arithmetic mean (AM), geometric mean (GM), and 95th percentile level (X95) were calculated by industry both for airborne lead and blood lead measurements. Since many measurements were below the limits of detection (LODs), the simple replacement with half of the LOD and maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) methods were used for statistical analysis. For examining the optimal exposure indicator of airborne lead exposure, blood lead levels were used as reference data for subsequent rank correlation analyses.

Results

A total of 19,637 airborne lead measurements and 32,848 blood lead measurements were used. In general, simple replacement showed a higher correlation than MLE. The results showed that AM and X95 using simple replacement could be used as optimal exposure intensity indicators, while X95 showed better correlations than AM in industries with 20 or more measurements.

Conclusion

Our results showed that AM or X95 could be potential candidates for exposure intensity indicators in the Korean carcinogen exposure database. Especially, X95 is an optimal indicator where there are enough measurements to compute X95 values.

中文翻译：

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使用韩国全国暴露数据库估算各行业的铅暴露强度

 背景

在之前的一项研究中，我们按韩国各行业估算了接触致癌物的流行率和工人接触致癌物的数量。本研究旨在通过与血铅测量值进行比较来评估空气中铅暴露的最佳暴露强度指标，以用于未来开发致癌物暴露强度数据库。

 方法

有关空气铅测量和血铅水平的数据是从 2015 年至 2016 年期间编制的全国职业暴露数据库中收集的。汇总统计数据，包括算术平均值 (AM)、几何平均值 (GM) 和第 95 个百分位水平 (X95) 通过以下公式计算行业中用于空气铅和血铅测量。由于许多测量值低于检测限 (LOD)，因此使用一半 LOD 的简单替换和最大似然估计 (MLE) 方法进行统计分析。为了检查空气中铅暴露的最佳暴露指标，血铅水平被用作后续等级相关分析的参考数据。

 结果

总共使用了 19,637 次空气铅测量值和 32,848 次血铅测量值。一般来说，简单替换显示出比 MLE 更高的相关性。结果表明，使用简单替换的AM和X95可以作为最佳暴露强度指标，而在具有20个或更多测量值的行业中，X95比AM表现出更好的相关性。

 结论

我们的结果表明，AM 或 X95 可能是韩国致癌物暴露数据库中暴露强度指标的潜在候选者。特别是，当有足够的测量值来计算 X95 值时，X95 是最佳指标。