Comparison of personal air benzene and urine t,t-muconic acid as a benzene exposure surrogate during turnaround maintenance in petrochemical plants.

Comparison of personal air benzene and urine t,t-muconic acid as a benzene exposure surrogate during turnaround maintenance in petrochemical plants. Ind Health. 2018 Apr 12;: Authors: Koh DH, Lee MY, Chung EK, Jang JK, Park DU Abstract Previous studies have shown that biomarkers of chemicals with long half-lives may be better surrogates of exposure for epidemiological analyses, leading to less attenuation of the exposure-disease association, than personal air samples. However, chemicals with short half-lives have shown inconsistent results. In the present study, we compared pairs of personal air benzene and its short-half-life urinary metabolite trans,trans-muconic acid (t,t-MA), and predicted attenuation bias of theoretical exposure-disease association. Total 669 pairs of personal air benzene and urine t,t-MA samples were taken from 474 male workers during turnaround maintenance operations held in seven petrochemical plants. Maintenance jobs were classified into 13 groups. Variance components were calculated for personal air benzene and urine t, t-MA separately to estimate the attenuation of the theoretical exposure-disease association. Personal air benzene and urine t, t-MA showed similar attenuation of the theoretical exposure-disease association. Analyses for repeated measurements showed similar results, while in analyses for values above the limits of detection (LODs), urine t, t-MA showed less attenuation of the theoretical exp...
Source: Industrial Health - Category: Occupational Health Tags: Ind Health Source Type: research