Cadmium Nephrotoxicity in Occupational and General Populations. L. T. Haber, TERA, Cincinnati, OH; and G. L. Foureman, US EPA, NCEA-RTP, NC
Occupational studies are often used in risk assessment to establish etiology and dose-response of adverse biological effects due to chemical exposures. The results of these evaluations are then often applied to the population in general. However, the dose-response data from occupational studies may not be directly applicable to the general public for several reasons. In morbidity studies, comparisons between workers and the general population have often shown decreased morbidity in the workers due to the "healthy worker effect." A "hardened worker effect" may also be observed where some workers may adapt to more or less continuous exposures, a situation that is not likely to take place in the general population. Therefore, it may be that worker populations may not only be less susceptible to effects from various toxicants in the workplace, but the variability in response observed in worker studies may not be representative of variability in the general population. The variability observed in the responses of a population to any given toxicant is a composite of individual differences in susceptibility and of biases, identified and unidentified. There is a substantial body of occupational data on the effects of cadmium, but the cadmium RfD and RfC are based on general population data. In this study, cadmium nephrotoxicity in the general population and occupational cohorts are compared. In order to do this comparison, it is first necessary to develop a uniform means of comparison for dose (e.g., mg Cd/24 hr urine) and for effect (e.g., mg or urinary protein, or mg beta-2-microglobuline/24 hr).
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