Safety and Health at Work

Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute, Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (산업안전보건연구원)
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Estimation of Lead Exposure Intensity by Industry Using Nationwide Exposure Databases in Korea

  • Koh, Dong-Hee (Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, International St. Mary's Hospital, Catholic Kwandong University) ;
  • Park, Ju-Hyun (Department of Statistics, Dongguk University) ;
  • Lee, Sang-Gil (Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute, Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency) ;
  • Kim, Hwan-Cheol (Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Inha University) ;
  • Jung, Hyejung (Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, International St. Mary's Hospital, Catholic Kwandong University) ;
  • Kim, Inah (Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, College of Medicine, Hanyang University) ;
  • Choi, Sangjun (Department of Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea) ;
  • Park, Donguk (Department of Environmental Health, Korea National Open University)
  • Received : 2021.03.12
  • Accepted : 2021.07.12
  • Published : 2021.12.30
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This study was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education (grant number 2017R1D1A1B04032379). This study was also supported by the Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute grant (2020-OSHRI-845) funded by Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency.

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