Background: The association between benzene exposure and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) has been the subject of debate as a result of inconsistent epidemiologic evidence. An International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) working group evaluated benzene in 2009 and noted evidence for a positive association between benzene exposure and NHL risk.
Objective: We evaluated the association between occupational benzene exposure and NHL among 73,087 women enrolled in the prospective population-based Shanghai Women’s Health Study.
Methods: Benzene exposure estimates were derived using a previously developed exposure assessment framework that combined ordinal job-exposure matrix intensity ratings with quantitative benzene exposure measurements from an inspection database of Shanghai factories collected between 1954 and 2000. Associations between benzene exposure metrics and NHL (n = 102 cases) were assessed using Cox proportional hazard models, with study follow-up occurring from December 1996 through December 2009.
Results: Women ever exposed to benzene had a significantly higher risk of NHL [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.87, 95% CI: 1.19, 2.96]. Compared with unexposed women, significant trends in NHL risk were observed for increasing years of benzene exposure (ptrend = 0.006) and increasing cumulative exposure levels (ptrend = 0.005), with the highest duration and cumulative exposure tertiles having a significantly higher association with NHL (HR = 2.07, 95% CI: 1.07, 4.01 and HR = 2.16, 95% CI: 1.17, 3.98, respectively).
Conclusions: Our findings, using a population-based prospective cohort of women with diverse occupational histories, provide additional evidence that occupational exposure to benzene is associated with NHL risk.
1Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Bethesda, Maryland, USA; 2Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands; 3Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, USA; 4Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI, NIH, DHHS, Bethesda, Maryland, USA; 5Stewart Exposure Assessments LLC, Arlington, Virginia, USA; 6Shanghai Cancer Institute, Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China; 7Department of Epidemiology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA; 8Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut, USA; 9Radiation Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI, NIH, DHHS, Bethesda, Maryland, USA; 10Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut, USA; 11Department of Epidemiology, Shanghai Cancer Institute, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China
Recommended Citation:
Bryan A. Bassig,1 Melissa C. Friesen,1 Roel Vermeulen,et al. Occupational Exposure to Benzene and Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in a Population-Based Cohort: The Shanghai Women’s Health Study[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2015-01-01,Volume 123(Issue 10):971