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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Ruth H. Allen, PhD¹, Anuradha Kodali, MBBS, MPH², David T. Mage, PhD³, Joseph Coble, PhD⁴, and Patricia Stewart, PhD⁴. (1) Office of Pesticide Programs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1801 So. Bell St., Arlington, VA 22202, 703-305-7191, allen.ruth@epa.gov, (2) Institute for Survey Research, Temple University, 4646 W 40 St NW, Washington, DC 20016, (3) Public Health, Temple University, P.O. Box 2843, Philadelphia, PA 19122, (4) Occupational & Environmental Epidemiology Branch, National Cancer Institute, 6120 Executive Boulevard MSC 7240, Rockville, MD 20852

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) randomly samples the U.S. population and reports on the subjects' most recent job category and industry. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates pesticides and their application at home and at work. We hypothesize that changing EPA regulations on pesticide usage may have reduced incidental exposure to pesticides in the workplace. We created a Job Exposure Matrix (JEM) to test whether exposures of workers to pesticides in industries not normally associated with pesticide usage, and who held jobs not typically associated with pesticide exposure, have decreased in recent years. We used NHANES data to test our JEM's ability to predict each adult subject's likely contact with pesticides at work and compared our prediction of exposure intensity with the NHANES measured urinary pesticide concentrations that were reported for the 3rd NHANES from 1988-1994. A significant relationship was found for insecticide exposures and the occupations of Education, Training and Library; Production; Transportation and Material Moving; and Food Preparation and Serving. We propose to take the similar NHANES 1999-2002 occupational and urinary pesticide concentration data reported by CDC and perform the same analyses using the identical JEM we used for the 1988-1994 NHANES. We present our results, and our analysis plan for the new 1999-2002 data. If the new NHANES data are released in time for analysis prior to presentation we will present the results and test whether incidental pesticide exposure in the workplace decreased over the preceding decade.

Learning Objectives:

• To learn how to construct a Job Exposure Matrix and apply it in occupational epidemiologic studies.

Keywords: Epidemiology, Occupational Exposure

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered