Estimating Historical Exposures of Workers in a Beryllium Manufacturing Plant

Details

• Personal Author:
  Petersen, Martin R. ; Sanderson, Wayne T. ; Ward E
• Description:
  Beryllium is known to be toxic to the lungs, causing beryllium lung disease and associated with increased lung cancer risk. Airborne beryllium exposures have been monitored since the 1940s. This study describes methods used to measure airborne beryllium concentrations and how historical measurements from a beryllium manufacturing plant were used to estimate workers' exposures in a lung cancer case-control study. Airborne beryllium concentrations had been measured using all-glass impingers, high-volume air filters, and personal respirable and total dust samplers. To provide consistency in exposure estimates over time, measurements collected by the other monitoring methods were converted to approximate the most frequently used high-volume, time-weighted average measurements. Because industrial hygiene measurements were not collected in every year for all jobs throughout the duration of the case-control study, exposure estimates had to be extrapolated from the existing measurements over time and across jobs. Over 7,000 historical measurements were available to estimate beryllium exposures of workers over time. Average exposures between jobs varied considerably and exposures for all jobs decreased dramatically between the 1940s and 1970s due to major plant production changes. Although error in the exposure metrics for the cases and controls likely occurred due to limitations of the exposure assessment data, the exposure estimates for each job over time provided a reasonable, objective mechanism for categorizing workers by the relative exposures they were likely to have encountered during their tenure. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Air Pollutants, Occupational Beryllium Case Reports Dust Environmental Monitoring Lung Lung Diseases Neoplasms Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Particulate Matter Respiratory System Respiratory Tract Diseases Safety

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• Keywords:
  Airborne-dusts Airborne-particles Author Keywords: Beryllium Beryllium-compounds Case-control Study Case-studies Exposure-assessment Lung-cancer Lung-disease Lung Cancer Occupational-exposure Pulmonary-system-disorders Respirable-dust Respiratory-system-disorders Retrospective Exposure Matrix Worker-health Workers

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• ISSN:
  0271-3586
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSHEFS - Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations, and Field Studies
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  145-157
• Volume:
  39
• Issue:
  2
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20021863
• Citation:
  Am J Ind Med 2001 Feb; 39(2):145-157
• Contact Point Address:
  Dr. Wayne T. Sanderson, Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations, and Field Studies, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 4676 Columbia Parkway, Cincinnati, Ohio 45226, USA
• Email:
  wts1@cdc.gov
• CAS Registry Number:
  Beryllium (CAS RN 7440-41-7)
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2001
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Source Full Name:
  American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:332c3b2ecf7bc71d48b88d7558e2049c7afd4be5806523f9d62881e7a817ab96ac9de3370ea313a1cc6082002e889e21c7a7e6e2a0c363c7f2dd4504dd8916bc
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/198953/cdc_198953_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 203.19 KB ]