RF-112 Asbestos-related disease in the Ontario Asbestos Workers Register
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives Research on asbestos-related disease (ARD) has traditionally focused on groups with well-recognized, consistently high exposure. Contemporary exposure to asbestos occurs more intermittently, for example during maintenance of asbestos-containing materials (ACM). The Ontario Asbestos Workers Register (AWR) was established in 1986 to track asbestos exposure. This study reports on the risk of ARD among workers in the AWR. Methods Overall 33,490 AWR registrants were included. Data were linked probabilistically with administrative health databases (1986–2018) to identify cases of ARD. Workers were followed until diagnosis, death, age 100, last contact with the health system, or end of study, whichever occurred first. Incidence rates were compared to the general population using standardized incidence ratios (SIRs). Associations between ACM exposure and ARD were estimated using Poisson regression. Results Overall 26,401(79%) AWR registrants were linked to health data; 97% were male. The mean age at cohort entry was 36 years. The most common industries represented were construction (61%), manufacturing (20%) and education (10%). Among men and women rates were markedly increased for mesothelioma [M:SIR 6.55(95% CI=5.34–7.96); W:SIR 19.3(3.87–56.3)] and pulmonary fibrosis [M:SIR 13.8(11.9–15.9); W:SIR 9.15(2.46–23.4)]. The risk of asbestosis was also elevated, but did not reach statistical significance among women [M:SIR 11.1(9.46–12.9); W:SIR 1.21(0.02–6.75)]. Among men and women, rates of COPD and lung cancer were elevated, but few cases were observed among women. Compared to workers with 238 hours had increased rates of lung cancer [RR 1.3(1.07–1.57)], mesothelioma [RR 3.13(1.94–5.06)], asbestosis [RR 3.31(2.33–4.71)], COPD [RR 1.34(1.22–1.48)], and pulmonary fibrosis [RR 1.86(1.34–2.58)]. Conclusion Exposure to asbestos in construction and building maintenance continues to contribute to ARD incidence. Though a Canadian ban on asbestos use in new products is encouraging, it is likely to have minimal impact on ARD resulting from construction activities, where exposure to existing ACM will persist.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".