TY - JOUR
T1 - Impact of occupational pesticide exposure assessment method on risk estimates for prostate cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and Parkinson's disease
T2 - results of three meta-analyses
AU - Ohlander, Johan
AU - Fuhrimann, Samuel
AU - Basinas, Ioannis
AU - Cherrie, John W.
AU - Galea, Karen S.
AU - Povey, Andrew C.
AU - van Tongeren, Martie
AU - Harding, Anne-Helen
AU - Jones, Kate
AU - Vermeulen, Roel
AU - Huss, Anke
AU - Kromhout, Hans
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding This study was funded by CropLife Europe. The sponsor had no direct role in the final design and conduct of the study, data collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, nor in preparation or final content of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors
PY - 2022/8
Y1 - 2022/8
N2 - Assessment of occupational pesticide exposure in epidemiological studies of chronic diseases is challenging. Biomonitoring of current pesticide levels might not correlate with past exposure relevant to disease aetiology, and indirect methods often rely on workers' imperfect recall of exposures, or job titles. We investigated how the applied exposure assessment method influenced risk estimates for some chronic diseases. In three meta-analyses the influence of exposure assessment method type on the summary risk ratio (sRR) of prostate cancer (PC) (25 articles), non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) (29 articles) and Parkinson's disease (PD) (32 articles) was investigated. Exposure assessment method types analysed were: group-level assessments (eg, job titles), self-reported exposures, expert-level assessments (eg, job-exposure matrices) and biomonitoring (eg, blood, urine). Additionally, sRRs were estimated by study design, publication year period and geographic location where the study was conducted. Exposure assessment method types were not associated with statistically significant different sRRs across any of the health outcomes. Heterogeneity in results varied from high in cancer studies to moderate and low in PD studies. Overall, case-control designs showed significantly higher sRR estimates than prospective cohort designs. Later NHL publications showed significantly higher sRR estimates than earlier. For PC, studies from North America showed significantly higher sRR estimates than studies from Europe. We conclude that exposure assessment method applied in studies of occupational exposure to pesticides appears not to have a significant effect on risk estimates for PC, NHL and PD. In systematic reviews of chronic health effects of occupational exposure to pesticides, epidemiological study design, publication year and geographic location, should primarily be considered.
AB - Assessment of occupational pesticide exposure in epidemiological studies of chronic diseases is challenging. Biomonitoring of current pesticide levels might not correlate with past exposure relevant to disease aetiology, and indirect methods often rely on workers' imperfect recall of exposures, or job titles. We investigated how the applied exposure assessment method influenced risk estimates for some chronic diseases. In three meta-analyses the influence of exposure assessment method type on the summary risk ratio (sRR) of prostate cancer (PC) (25 articles), non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) (29 articles) and Parkinson's disease (PD) (32 articles) was investigated. Exposure assessment method types analysed were: group-level assessments (eg, job titles), self-reported exposures, expert-level assessments (eg, job-exposure matrices) and biomonitoring (eg, blood, urine). Additionally, sRRs were estimated by study design, publication year period and geographic location where the study was conducted. Exposure assessment method types were not associated with statistically significant different sRRs across any of the health outcomes. Heterogeneity in results varied from high in cancer studies to moderate and low in PD studies. Overall, case-control designs showed significantly higher sRR estimates than prospective cohort designs. Later NHL publications showed significantly higher sRR estimates than earlier. For PC, studies from North America showed significantly higher sRR estimates than studies from Europe. We conclude that exposure assessment method applied in studies of occupational exposure to pesticides appears not to have a significant effect on risk estimates for PC, NHL and PD. In systematic reviews of chronic health effects of occupational exposure to pesticides, epidemiological study design, publication year and geographic location, should primarily be considered.
KW - agriculture
KW - epidemiology
KW - meta-analysis
KW - occupational health
KW - pesticides
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85128976228&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1136/oemed-2021-108046
DO - 10.1136/oemed-2021-108046
M3 - Review article
C2 - 35393289
SN - 1351-0711
VL - 79
SP - 566
EP - 574
JO - Occupational and Environmental Medicine
JF - Occupational and Environmental Medicine
IS - 8
ER -