Lung and Laryngeal Cancers in Relation to Shipyard Employment in Coastal Virginia

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A case-control study involving interviews with the relatives of males who died of lung cancer (336 cases), larynx cancer (64 cases), and causes other than chronic respiratory disease (361 controls) was undertaken to discover reasons for the high respiratory cancer mortality rates in coastal Virginia. An increased risk of lung cancer was associated with employment in area shipyards begun before 1950 (the relative risk, adjusted for cigarette smoking, was 1.7, with 95% confidence limits of 1.2–2.4). The excess risk was of the same order of magnitude among those who worked only a few years, usually during World War II, as among those whose careers were spent in the shipbuilding industry. No increase in lung cancer was found among the smaller number of men who began work in the industry after 1949, although sufficient time may not yet have elapsed for lung tumors to be expressed in this cohort. No overall excess of laryngeal cancer associated with shipbuilding was found, but a disproportionate number of blacks with this cancer worked in area shipyards before 1950 (the relative risk among blacks after adjustment for cigarette smoking was 2.4, with 95% confidence limits of 1.0–5.9). The actual handling of asbestos in shipyard duties was not reported more often among the patients, but widespread shipyard exposures to asbestos during World War II appear to account for at least part of the elevated rates of respiratory cancer in coastal Virginia today.