Occupational and environmental asbestos exposure and the risk of lung cancer in Korea: A case-control study in South Chungcheong Province of Korea

Da An Huh, Min Sung Kang, Jiyun Lee, Ji Yoon Choi, Kyong Whan Moon, Yong Jin Lee

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    15 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Despite the use of large amounts of asbestos in the 1990s, few studies have been conducted in Korea on occupational and environmental asbestos exposure and lung cancer risk. The main aim of this study was to estimate the risk of lung cancer development caused by occupational and environmental asbestos exposures in residents of South Chungcheong Province, where about half of the asbestos mines in Korea operated. We conducted a case-control study, for which the information on asbestos exposure history and demographic characteristics was provided by the Environmental Health Center for asbestos of Soonchunhyang University Cheonan Hospital. After adjusting for all covariates, the odds ratios for lung cancer tended to increase with higher exposure probability for both occupational as well as environmental asbestos. The relative risk of occupational asbestos exposure was higher than that of environmental exposure; the interaction of co-exposure was not statistically significant. The estimated means of the latency period were significantly shorter in participants who were engaged in the production of asbestos-containing products and in those who lived near asbestos industries as compared to other groups.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article numbere0249790
    JournalPloS one
    Volume16
    Issue number4 April
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2021 Apr

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    This research was supported by the Ministry of Environment (Environmental Health Center for Asbestos) and the Soonchunhyang University Research Fund.

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2021 Huh et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General

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