O-41 Firefighting and cancer: a meta-analysis of cohort studies in the context of cancer hazard identification
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective We performed a meta-analysis of epidemiological results for the association between occupational exposure as a firefighter and the occurrence of cancer as part of the broader evidence synthesis work of the IARC Monographs Programme. Methods A systematic literature search was conducted to identify cohort studies of firefighters followed for cancer incidence and mortality. Studies were rated for the influence of key biases on results. Random-effects meta-analysis models were used to estimate the association between ever and duration of employment as a firefighter and risk of 12 selected cancers. The influence of potential biases was explored in sensitivity analyses, including those related to the use of general, uniformed service, and working population comparison groups. Result Among the 16 cancer incidence studies that met inclusion criteria for one or more cancer sites, the estimated meta-rate ratio, 95% confidence interval (CI), and heterogeneity statistic (I2) for ever-employment as a predominantly male career firefighter compared mostly to general populations was 1.58 (1.14–2.20, 8%) for mesothelioma, 1.16 (1.08–1.26, 0%) for bladder cancer, 1.21 (1.12–1.32, 81%) for prostate cancer, 1.37 (1.03–1.82, 56%) for testicular cancer, 1.19 (1.07–1.32, 37%) for colon cancer, 1.36 (1.15–1.62, 83%) for melanoma, 1.12 (1.01–1.25, 0%) for non-Hodgkin lymphoma,1.28 (1.02–1.61, 40%) for thyroid cancer, and 1.09 (0.92–1.29, 55%) for kidney cancer. Ever-employment as a firefighter was not positively associated with lung, nervous system, or stomach cancer. Few cancer sites showed increasing risks by employment duration. Results for mesothelioma and bladder cancer exhibited low heterogeneity and were largely robust across sensitivity analyses evaluating bias. Conclusions There is epidemiological evidence to support a causal role for occupational exposure as a firefighter and certain cancers, especially mesothelioma and bladder cancer. Challenges persist in the body of evidence related to the consistency and quality of exposure assessment and control of confounding and medical surveillance bias.
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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 | 0.027 | 0.049 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.077 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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 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".