Application of the New Asthma-Specific Job Exposure Matrix: A Study in Quebec Apprentice Cohort Exposed to Isocyanates
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Recently, the first asthma-specific Job Exposure Matrix (JEM) was updated to occupational asthma-specific JEM (OAsJEM). Our study aimed to evaluate the association between continued exposure to isocyanates and incident work-related chest symptoms in former car-painting apprentices and to compare the associations using the first and new OAsJEMs.Methods: We used data from an inception cohort of male car-painting apprentices. Post-apprenticeship exposure to isocyanate during follow-up was evaluated using the first asthma-specific JEM (“exposed”=1 or “not exposed”=0) and the new OAsJEM (high=2, medium=1, and none=0). Association between occupation exposure to isocyanate and incidence of work-related rhinoconjunctival and chest symptoms were evaluated through cox regression models, adjusted for age, smoking, wheezing, and non-specific bronchial hyperresponsiveness. Results: The agreement between the two JEMs (exposed vs non-exposed to isocyanate) was perfect (kappa coefficient=0.946, p<0.001). There were only five subjects who were classified as non-exposed based on the first JEM, but had a medium exposure to isocyanate based on the new OAsJEM. Exposure to isocyanate increased the risk of occupational chest symptoms in the high-exposure category (hazard ratio [HR] 2.7, 95% CI 1.1 – 6.6) and the medium category (HR 2.9, 95% CI 0.3 – 30.0) compared to the reference group based on the new OAsJEM, whereas an HR of 2.5 (95% CI 1.0-6.2) was observed from the first JEM. Both JEMs yielded an inconclusive association between exposure to isocyanates and the risk for work-related rhino-conjunctivitis. Conclusion: The asthma-specific JEM and OAsJEM consistently showed that isocyanate exposure increased the risk of incident work-related chest symptoms.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
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 teacher head, 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".