RESEARCH ARTICLE
Blood Lead Levels and Cause-Specific Mortality of Inorganic Lead-Exposed Workers in South Korea Min-Gi Kim1,2, Jae-Hong Ryoo3, Se-Jin Chang1, Chun-Bae Kim1, Jong-Ku Park1, SangBaek Koh1*, Yeon-Soon Ahn4* 1 2 3 4
a11111
Graduate School of Medicine, Wonju College of Medicine, Yonsei University, Wonju, Korea, Departments of Occupational Medicine, Dongguk University Gyeongju Hospital, Gyeongju, Korea, Departments of Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea, Department of Occupational Medicine, Dongguk University Ilsan Hospital, Goyang-si, Korea
* [email protected] (YSA); [email protected] (SBK)
Abstract OPEN ACCESS Citation: Kim M-G, Ryoo J-H, Chang S-J, Kim C-B, Park J-K, Koh S-B, et al. (2015) Blood Lead Levels and Cause-Specific Mortality of Inorganic LeadExposed Workers in South Korea. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0140360. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0140360 Editor: Max Costa, New York University School of Medicine, UNITED STATES Received: March 9, 2015 Accepted: September 24, 2015 Published: October 15, 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Kim 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. Data Availability Statement: Data cannot be made publicly available, as the dataset contains potentially identifying information. A de-identified dataset is available upon request to the corresponding author.
The objective of this study was to identify the association of blood lead level (BLL) with mortality in inorganic lead-exposed workers of South Korea. A cohort was compiled comprising 81,067 inorganic lead exposed workers working between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2004. This cohort was merged with the Korean National Statistical Office to follow-up for mortality between 2000 and 2008. After adjusting for age and other carcinogenic metal exposure, all-cause mortality (Relative risk [RR] 1.36, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.03– 1.79), digestive disease (RR 3.23, 95% CI 1.33–7.86), and intentional self-harm (RR 2.92, 95% CI 1.07–7.81) were statistically significantly higher in males with BLL >20 μg/dl than of those with BLL 10μg/dl. The RR of males with BLL of 10–20 μg/dl was statistically higher than of those with BLL 10μg/dl in infection (RR 3.73. 95% CI, 1.06–13.06). The RRs of females with 10–20 μg/dl BLL was statistically significantly greater than those with BLL
Blood Lead Levels and Cause-Specific Mortality of Inorganic Lead-Exposed Workers in South Korea Min-Gi Kim1,2, Jae-Hong Ryoo3, Se-Jin Chang1, Chun-Bae Kim1, Jong-Ku Park1, SangBaek Koh1*, Yeon-Soon Ahn4* 1 2 3 4
a11111
Graduate School of Medicine, Wonju College of Medicine, Yonsei University, Wonju, Korea, Departments of Occupational Medicine, Dongguk University Gyeongju Hospital, Gyeongju, Korea, Departments of Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea, Department of Occupational Medicine, Dongguk University Ilsan Hospital, Goyang-si, Korea
* [email protected] (YSA); [email protected] (SBK)
Abstract OPEN ACCESS Citation: Kim M-G, Ryoo J-H, Chang S-J, Kim C-B, Park J-K, Koh S-B, et al. (2015) Blood Lead Levels and Cause-Specific Mortality of Inorganic LeadExposed Workers in South Korea. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0140360. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0140360 Editor: Max Costa, New York University School of Medicine, UNITED STATES Received: March 9, 2015 Accepted: September 24, 2015 Published: October 15, 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Kim 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. Data Availability Statement: Data cannot be made publicly available, as the dataset contains potentially identifying information. A de-identified dataset is available upon request to the corresponding author.
The objective of this study was to identify the association of blood lead level (BLL) with mortality in inorganic lead-exposed workers of South Korea. A cohort was compiled comprising 81,067 inorganic lead exposed workers working between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2004. This cohort was merged with the Korean National Statistical Office to follow-up for mortality between 2000 and 2008. After adjusting for age and other carcinogenic metal exposure, all-cause mortality (Relative risk [RR] 1.36, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.03– 1.79), digestive disease (RR 3.23, 95% CI 1.33–7.86), and intentional self-harm (RR 2.92, 95% CI 1.07–7.81) were statistically significantly higher in males with BLL >20 μg/dl than of those with BLL 10μg/dl. The RR of males with BLL of 10–20 μg/dl was statistically higher than of those with BLL 10μg/dl in infection (RR 3.73. 95% CI, 1.06–13.06). The RRs of females with 10–20 μg/dl BLL was statistically significantly greater than those with BLL
