Publications

Drs. Matanoski and Tao at Johns Hopkins University examined the relationship between styrene exposure and heart disease in workers in styrene-butadiene polymer manufacturing plants between 1943 and 1982. Workers who had died from ischemic heart disease were compared to a subgroup of all men employed in two styrene-butadiene polymer manufacturing plants during that time. Individual exposure histories were determined from job records, or constructed using a statistical method to estimate exposure when records were missing.

A Special Report of the Institute's Diesel Epidemiology Working Group. The Diesel Epidemiology Working Group was formed in the fall of 2000 to (1) review reports from 6 diesel feasibility studies funded by HEI to provide information on potential study populations and on exposure assessment methods; and (2) consider the results of the feasibility studies and other ongoing research in order to develop a new research agenda to seek better information for quantitative risk assessment of lung cancer and other chronic diseases that may result from exposure to diesel exhaust. The 6 feasibility studies described in this report were funded by HEI to provide insight about whether a new retrospective or prospective epidemiologic study could provide data to improve estimates of cancer risk from exposure to diesel exhaust, and about whether new methods of exposure analysis would allow us to reevaluate older epidemiologic studies.

Dr. Leikauf and colleagues at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center hypothesized that the response of mice exposed to high concentrations of inhaled nickel particles was under genetic control. Using nickel, a transition element shown to cause adverse effects at high concentrations in ambient air, the investigators sought to identify the genes involved in controlling the inflammatory and toxic effects of continuous exposure to nickel particles.

Dr. Renaud Vincent and his colleagues of Health Canada, Ottawa, hypothesized that ambient PM would cause changes in certain cardiovascular parameters. The investigators implanted rats with radiotransmitters to collect continuous data and indwelling catheters for repeated blood sampling. The animals were exposed to clean air or one of four types of resuspended particles: ambient particles (Ottawa dust), ambient particles that had been washed in water to remove soluble components, diesel soot, or carbon black.