Occupational histories collected during interviews in an epidemiological study and then expressed as types and levels of occupational exposure have been compared to the results acquired in a physico-chemical analysis of the particles extracted from pulmonary parenchyma of forty-two subjects with different types of cancer. The original scenario was for a group of workers, ten exposed mainly to asbestos fibers, ten to silica, ten to welding fumes, six smokers, and six nonsmokers not exposed to the target contaminants. Fragments of tissue that had been formolated or covered in paraffin were used after having been standardized by two pathologists. The preparation and analytical protocols were validated so that a representative number of particles could be counted and "reasonably" characterized from their morphology and their chemical composition by transmission electron microscopy and laser microprobe mass analyser. / A Kappa test revealed that there was a limited correlation at the 5% level of confidence between the work history history and physico-chemical estimators for the group of subjects exposed to asbestos fiber (k = 0.475, p = 0.001), a 10% level for the group with silica exposure (k = 0.213, p = 0.089) and at a 5% level in the unexposed nonsmoker group (k = 0.417, p = 0.003). The average pulmonary dust burden of the log-normalized values for certain minerals that were extracted from subjects belonging to certain groups of interest were statistically different.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.70181 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | Dufresne, André. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Occupational Health.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001214444, proquestno: AAINN67588, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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