title: Congenital anomalies among the offspring of fire fighters.
abstract: A case-control study has been conducted to determine the association between employment as a fire fighter and congenital heart defects among the offspring. Cases were fathers of all children born between 1979 and 1986 in Ontario, Canada, who were diagnosed with a cardiac congenital anomaly during the first year of life (n = 9340). Matched controls (n = 9340), defined as fathers whose child did not have a congenital anomaly, were randomly selected from the Ontario birth certificate file. In order to identify those fathers who had been employed as a fire fighter, the cases and controls were linked to a cohort of Metropolitan Toronto fire fighters. Eleven cases and nine controls worked as fire fighters, giving an odds ratio of 1.22 (95 percent confidence interval 0.46-3.33). This study had sufficient power to detect the level of risk reported in one previous study; however, these results do not support a hypothesis of elevated risk of cardiac congenital anomalies among the offspring of fire fighters.
authors.affiliation: Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: K J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Aronson
authors.forename: L A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Dodds
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Marrett
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wall
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D015331:Cohort Studies; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D004651:Employment; D005220:Fathers; D005390:Fires; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006330:Heart Defects, Congenital / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016273:Occupational Exposure; D016017:Odds Ratio; D009864:Ontario / Q000453:epidemiology; D018812:Paternal Exposure; D012307:Risk Factors