Assessment of historical exposures to talc at a mining and milling facility.
The purpose of this study was to develop an estimate of exposure to respirable dust for all job categories and all years in a retrospective follow-up study of worker mortality in a talc mining and milling facility. All jobs were assigned to work areas that were considered to have similar exposure profiles. Uniform exposure time periods during which non-random, deterministic variables were thought to be constant were identified and an experienced rater assigned categorical exposure scores to each work area/time period. These scores and measured baseline respirable dust concentrations were used to calculate the estimated job area/year concentrations for each work area/time period. Estimates were compared to available historical measurements. The estimated exposures ranged from 1.7 to 0.1 mg/m(3) and displayed a decreasing trend over time. When compared with measured exposures, the estimated exposures had a correlation coefficient of 0.55 with an average difference of 0.01 mg/m(3) and a range of 0.60 to -0.48 mg/m(3). The estimates were considered to be acceptable for determining relative ranking of subjects according to cumulative exposure.
Oestenstad
Kent
K
Department of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, 35294-0022, USA. oestensk@uab.edu
Honda
Yasushi
Y
Delzell
Elizabeth
E
Brill
Ilene
I
D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008906:Mining; D009518:New York; D016273:Occupational Exposure / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013627:Talc
D013627:Talc