[Mortality of chromium plating workers in Japan--a 16-year follow-up study].
Health hazards due to exposure to chromium in the chromium plating industry has been documented in only a few epidemiological studies. A prospective cohort study was conducted to examine the health hazards of chromium plating with a follow-up period of over sixteen years. Subjects were 1193 male metal platers in the small-scale chromium plating plants in Tokyo. They were divided into a chromium plater subgroup (n = 623) and non-chromium plater subgroup (n = 567) and were followed up from October 1976 through December 1992. The 95% confidence interval (95%CI) of the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) was used to evaluate statistical significance. In the chromium plating subgroup, the risk of chronic hepatitis or liver cirrhosis was significantly elevated (SMR 2.34; 95%CI 1.17-4.19) and a trend toward statistical significance was seen for the risk of lung cancer (SMR 1.18; 95%CI 0.99-3.04). No significantly elevated risk was seen in the non-chromium plating subgroup. We concluded that, as the number of disease-specific deaths was small, further follow-up is necessary.
Itoh
T
T
Department of Environmental Epidemiology, University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Japan.
Takahashi
K
K
Okubo
T
T
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002857:Chromium / Q000009:adverse effects*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008669:Metallurgy; D008875:Middle Aged; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000401:mortality*; D016273:Occupational Exposure; D011446:Prospective Studies; D014041:Tokyo / Q000453:epidemiology
D002857:Chromium