title: [Mortality study in metal electroplating workers in Bologna (Northern Italy)].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  to investigate general and cause-specific mortality of workers exposed to metals and other chemicals in the electroplating industry in Bologna Province.
  
  
  METHODS
  factory records of workers employed in 90 electroplating companies present in 1995 were used to build a cohort of subjects potentially exposed to carcinogenic and other substances in this industry, defined as "revised cohort", which was followed-up for mortality from 1960, or since first employment in an electroplating company if later, to 2008. Mortality risk was also examined separately in a subset of the cohort, composed of workers with at least one year of employment in electroplating, denominated "final cohort". Death rates of residents in Emilia-Romagna Region (Northern Italy) were used as a reference.
  
  
  RESULTS
  follow-up completeness was 99%. During the observation period, 533 deaths out of 2,983 subjects were observed in the revised cohort and 317 out of 1,739 in the final cohort. Significantly increased Standardized Mortality Ratios were estimated for overall mortality and for mortality from AIDS in the revised cohort and for bladder and rectal cancer in both cohorts.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  the present study is, to authors' knowledge, the largest mortality investigation conducted in Italy on electroplating workers, for both size and temporal extension. The presence of excess mortality from causes of death not consistently associated in the literature with exposure to agents in this industry suggests that further research is needed to confirm these associations.
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gerosa
authors.affiliation: Azienda USL di Bologna, Dipartimento di sanità pubblica, Area prevenzione e sicurezza ambienti di lavoro, Bologna. corrado.scarnato@ausl.bologna.it.
authors.forename: Corrado
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Scarnato
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Giacomozzi
authors.forename: Angelo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: d'Errico
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004595:Electroplating; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008669:Metallurgy; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000401:mortality*
vernacular_title: Studio di mortalità in una coorte di esposti a metalli nel comparto galvanotecnica del territorio di Bologna.