Occupational Exposure to Benzene and Risk of Breast Cancer: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Benzene is a recognized carcinogen; however, its association with breast cancer is not well established. Hence, a meta-analysis of cohort and case-control studies was performed to determine the association between occupational benzene exposure and the risk of breast cancer. METHODS: A systematic literature review identified 7573 publications from which 23 cohort and case-control studies were retained and evaluated using meta-analyses (fixed effects model). PRISMA guidelines were followed. Our protocol was registered in the PROSPERO database (Registration No. CRD42022379720). Study quality was assessed using a modified Newcastle-Ottawa scale (NOS). RESULTS: The summary relative risk (RR) for ever-benzene exposure was 1.08 (95% CI=1.03-1.14, I2=38.6%, n=23 risk estimates); corresponding RR for cancer incidence and mortality were 1.08 (95% CI=1.02-1.14, I2=56.1%, n=16) and 1.10 (95% CI=0.87-1.37, I2<0.001%, n=10). However, heterogeneity was detected for sex (p-het=0.002), publication year (p-het<0.001), study design (p-het<0.001), study quality (p-het<0.001), and industry of employment (p-het=0.03). The RR for high level of exposure showed positive association with breast cancer 1.35 (95% CI=1.06-1.72, I2 =<0.001%, n=3) and (P-het=0.64). Publication bias was detected (p=0.03). CONCLUSIONS: The results of our meta-analysis indicate a positive association between occupational benzene exposure and an increased risk of breast cancer, particularly when exposed to higher levels of benzene. However, bias and confounding could not be excluded.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".