Development of an Asthma-Specific Job Exposure Matrix for Use in the United States

Details

• Personal Author:
  Andersson E ; Doney B ; Henneberger, Paul K. ; Kurth LM ; Liang X
• Description:
  Introduction: Existing asthma-specific job-exposure matrices (JEMs) do not necessarily reflect current working conditions in the USA and do not directly function with occupational coding systems commonly used in the USA. We initiated a project to modify an existing JEM to address these limitations, and to apply the new JEM to the entire US employed population to estimate quantitatively the extent of probable work-related asthma exposures nationwide. Methods: We started with an asthma-specific JEM that was developed for northern Europe (the N-JEM) and modified it to function with the 2010 US Standard Occupational Classification (SOC-2010) codes and to reflect working conditions in the USA during the post-2000 period. This involved cross walking from the 1988 International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88) codes used in the N-JEM to the SOC-2010 codes, transferring the N-JEM exposure assignments to the SOC-2010 codes, and modifying those assignments to reflect working conditions in the USA. The new US asthma JEM (USA-JEM) assigns exposures to 19 agents organized into five categories. The USA-JEM and N-JEM were applied to the same sample of working adults with asthma to compare how they performed, and the USA-JEM was also applied to the entire 2015 US working population to estimate the extent of occupational asthma exposures nationally. Results: The USA-JEM assigns at least one asthma-related probable exposure to 47.5% and at least one possible exposure to 14.9% of the 840 SOC-2010 detailed occupations, and 9.0% of the occupations have both probable exposure to at least one agent and possible exposure to at least one other agent. The USA-JEM has greater sensitivity for cleaning products, highly reactive disinfectants and sterilants, and irritant peak exposures than the N-JEM. When applied to the entire 2015 US working population, the USA-JEM determined that 42.6% of workers had probable exposure to at least one type of occupational asthma agent. Discussion: A new asthma-specific JEM for application in the USA was developed. Additional work is needed to compare its performance to similar JEMs and, if possible, to exposure assessments generated on a case-by-case basis. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Asthma Asthma, Occupational Irritants Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Author Keywords: Asthma Chemical Agents Cleaning Compounds Exposure Assessment JEM Job Exposure Matrix Occupations Quantitative Analysis Sensitizers Work-related
• ISSN:
  2398-7308
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; West Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  RHD - Respiratory Health Division
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  82-95
• Volume:
  64
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20057882
• Citation:
  Ann Work Expo Health 2020 Jan; 64(1):82-95
• Contact Point Address:
  Paul K. Henneberger, Respiratory Health Division, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1095 Willowdale Road, Morgantown, WV 26505, USA
• Email:
  pkh0@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2020
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Source Full Name:
  Annals of Work Exposures and Health
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:1fc03404d71837bff43f2af7a861766df25287c21f5b11e012f1f2e02b710fa520f2474f279cd5191b2a7871026c9bfa7e6ab8a00ad8f67df244a1cb9fddba4f
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/215088/cdc_215088_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 219.87 KB ]