MODELING EPIDEMIOLOGIC STUDIES OF OCCUPATIONAL COHORTS FOR THE QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT OF CARCINOGENIC HAZARDS

Epidemiologic studies of occupational cohorts have played a major role in the quantitative assessment of risks associated with several carci nogenic hazards and are likely to play an increasingly important role in this area. Relatively little attention has been given in either the epidemiologic or the risk assessment literature to the development of appropriate methods for modeling epidemiologic data for quantitative risk assessment (QRA). The purpose of this paper is to review currentl y available methods for modeling epidemiologic data for risk assessmen t. The focus of this paper is on methods for use with retrospective co hort mortality studies of occupational groups for estimating cancer ri sk, since these are the data most commonly used when epidemiologic inf ormation is used for QRA. Both empirical (e.g., Poisson regression and Cox proportionate hazards model) and biologic (e.g., two-stage models ) models are considered. Analyses of a study of lung cancer among work ers exposed to cadmium are used to illustrate these modeling methods. Based on this example it is demonstrated that the selection of a parti cular model may have a large influence on the resulting estimates of r isk. (C) 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.