• 한국대기환경학회지
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• 제13권4호
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• pp.257-267
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• 1997

This study focuses on the health risk assessment of airborne volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a petrochemical complex, with several emphases on a risk assessment method. The first emphasis is on the importance of hazard identification to determine the likely carcinogenic potential of a VOC. Without considering this type of information, a direct comparison of the carcinogenic risks of two pollutants is meaningless. Therefore, wer suggest that this type of information be prepared and be listed with the estimate of cancer risk in parallel. The second emphasis is on the selection of a better dose-response model to estimate unit risk or cancer potency factor of a carcinogenic VOC. Finally, probilistic risk assessment method is discussed and recommended to use within a comparison of conventional point-estimate method. A health risk assessment has also been carried out. For non-carcinogenic risk, even the highest hazard index for carbon tetrachloride is estimated to be less than 1 with the other VOCs less than 0.03. However, the lifetime cancer risk from the inhalation of airborne VOCs is estimated to be about $2.6 \times 10^{-4}$ which is higher than the risk standard of $10^{-6}$ or even $10^{-5}$. Therefore, the investigation into domestic petrochemical complexes should be strengthened to obtain more fine long-term airborne VOC data.

• 한국환경보건학회지
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• 제35권4호
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• pp.269-277
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• 2009

Objective : The objective of this study was to examine how experts and the public perceived various environmental and technological hazards based on psychometric paradigm. Methods : We conducted a survey that included 30 hazards and 10 risk attributes. Subjects of this study were 214 people with three groups; (1) experts (55 people), (2) graduates( 78 people), (3) under graduates (81 people). Factor analysis was used to confirm the common risk attribute from 8 risk attributes. Also, multiple regression analysis was used to identify factors influencing on perceived risk and benefit of hazards. Results : This study revealed that experts tend to be more tolerant than graduates and under graduate students for the 30 hazards. Using factor analysis, two main factors were identified: factor 1, commonly called "Dread Risk", and factors 2, commonly called, "Unknown Risk" in the literature. We identified that environmental hormone concentration and global warming ranked high in both dread risk and unknown risk. Multiple regression models were used to test the association of perceived social risk and perceived social benefit with two main factors. Dread risk had significant explanatory power on perceived social risk and benefit. We identified that the experts were less likely to perceived dread risk and know more information about the hazards. Conclusions : There were differences of risk perception between experts and lay people. Especially, experts' perception of risk was commonly lower than other people's perception.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제15권21호
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• pp.9543-9547
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• 2014

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate demographic features, dietary habits, and some possible risk factors for being susceptible to breast cancer in Iranian women. Materials and Methods: A study of dietary habits and breast cancer was conducted among 53 Iranian women with histological confirmed disease and 40 matched controls. A dietary habits questionnaire was used to evaluate the pattern of selected food intakes. The risk of cancer was analyzed after adjustment for confounding factors. Age, weight, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, educational status, parity, lactation, marital status, menopause, history of estrogen therapy, and family history of breast disease or cancer were assessed among participants. Special attention was given to the relationship between consumption of high fat meat, milk, yogurt and cheese as well use of frying oils for frying foods, use of olive/liquid oils for cooking, removing fat from meat and poultry, removing chicken skin and not use of mayonnaise as salad dressing and the risk of breast cancer. Moreover, salad, vegetable and fruit consumption, and eating outdoors owere investigated. Results: Our results revealed significant lower education and higher BMI and waist circumference levels in patients with breast cancer. There was significantly increased breast cancer risk in overweight women in comparison with normal weight (OR=2.91, 95%CI 1.24 to 6.82). High intake of fat dairy products including milk and cheese was found to be a statistically significant factor for increasing breast cancer risk in models adjusting for age, BMI and education. Use of olive/liquid oils for cooking and avoidance of mayonnaise as salad dressing are related to lower risk of breast cancer. The frequency of vegetable and fruit consumption was significantly lower in patients with breast cancer compared to healthy women. Conclusions: Dietary habits might be risk factors for breast cancer among Iranian women. Adoption of a prudent diet could be an appropriate strategy for preventing breast cancer.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• 제1권2호
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• pp.80-86
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• 2003

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection is known as the main factor for cervical cancer which is a leading cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. Because there are more than 100 types in HPV, it is critical to discriminate the HPVs related with cervical cancer from those not related with it. In this paper, the risk type of HPVs using their textual explanation. The important issue in this problem is to distinguish false negatives from false positives. That is, we must find high-risk HPVs as many as possible though we may miss some low-risk HPVs. For this purpose, the AdaCost, a cost-sensitive learner is adopted to consider different costs between training examples. The experimental results on the HPV sequence database show that the consideration of costs gives higher performance. The improvement in F-score is higher than that of the accuracy, which implies that the number of high-risk HPVs found is increased.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제13권4호
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• pp.1093-1096
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• 2012

Background: Cervical cancer is common among women worldwide. A multitude of risk factors aggravate the disease. This study was conducted to: (1) determine the prevalence and (2) make a comparative analysis of the socio-demographic and behavioural risk factors of cervical cancer and knowledge, attitude and practice between rural and urban women of North Bengal, India. Study Design: Community-based cross-sectional study. Methods: A survey (first in North Bengal) was conducted among 133 women in a rural area (Kawakhali) and 88 women in an urban slum (Shaktigarh) using predesigned semi-structured questionnaires. The respondents were informed of the causes (including HPV), signs and symptoms, prevention of cervical cancer and treatment, and the procedure of the PAP test and HPV vaccination. Results: The prevalence of risk factors like multiparity, early age of marriage, use of cloth during menstruation, use of condom and OCP, early age of first intercourse was 37.2%, 82%, 83.3%, 5.4%, 15.8% and 65.6% respectively. Awareness about the cause, signs and symptoms, prevention of cervical cancer, PAP test and HPV vaccination was 3.6%, 6.3%, 3.6%, 9.5% and 14.5% respectively. Chi-square testing revealed that in the study population, significant differential at 5% exists between rural and urban residents with respect to number of children, use of cloth/sanitary napkins, family history of cancer and awareness regarding causes of cervical cancer. Regarding KAP, again using chi-square tests, surprisingly, level of education is found to be significant for each element of KAP in urban areas in contrast to complete absence of association between education and elements of KAP in rural areas. Conclusions: A large number of risk factors were present in both areas, the prevalence being higher in the rural areas. The level of awareness and role of education appears to be insignificant determinants in rural compared to urban areas. This pilot study needs to be followed up by large scale programmes to re-orient awareness campaigns, especially in rural areas.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• 제40권4호
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• pp.321-328
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• 2007

Objectives : The aim of this study was to evaluate the roles of cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, tuberculosis, and their interactions in the risk of lung cancer in a Korean cohort. Methods : The study subjects comprised 13,150 males and females aged above 20 years old. During the follow up period from 1993 to 2002, 79 lung cancer cases were identified by the central cancer registry and the national death certificate database. Information on cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption and the history of physician-diagnosed tuberculosis was obtained by interview. Indirect chest X-ray findings were also evaluated to ascertain tuberculosis cases. Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) after adjusting for age and gender. Results : Cigarette smoking was statistically significantly associated with an increased risk of lung cancer [for current smokers, RR = 2.33 (95% CI = 1.23 - 4.42) compared to non-smokers]. After further adjustment for cigarette smoking, both alcohol consumption and tuberculosis showed no statistically significant association with the risk of lung cancer [for current drinkers, RR = 0.80 (95% CI = 0.48 - 1.33) compared to non-drinkers] [for tuberculosis cases, RR = 1.17 (95% CI = 0.58 - 2.36) compared to non-cases]. There was no statistically significant interaction between cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption (p-interaction = 0.38), or cigarette smoking and tuberculosis (p-interaction = 0.74). Conclusions : Although cigarette smoking was confirmed as a risk factor of lung cancer in this cohort study, this study suggests that alcohol consumption and tuberculosis may not be associated with the risk of lung cancer.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제16권6호
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• pp.2333-2340
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• 2015

Background: Due to the strong inhibitory effects of $PPAR{\gamma}$ gene on the growth of cancer cells, the role of Pro12Ala polymorphism in $PPAR{\gamma}$ gene has been extensively investigated in cancer recently. However, the results were inconsistent according to cancer type. The aim of this study was to comprehensively evaluate the $PPAR{\gamma}$ Pro12Ala polymorphism and gastric cancer susceptibility. Materials and Methods: Search strategies were conducted in Pubmed, Medline (Ovid), Chinese biomedical database (CBM), China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI), VIP, and Wanfang database, covering all publications, with the last search up to November 01, 2014. The strength of association between $PPAR{\gamma}$ Pro12Ala polymorphism and gastric cancer risk was assessed by OR with 95%CI. Results: A total of 546 cases and 827 controls in 5 case-control studies were included in this meta-analysis. The results indicated that the variant G allele carriers (CG+GG) had a 2.31 times higher risk for gastric cancer when compared with the homozygote CC (odds ratio (OR)=2.31, 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.67-3.21 for CG+GG vs. CC). In the subgroup analysis by ethnicity, significantly elevated risks were both found in Asians (OR=2.56, 95% CI=1.42-4.64) and Caucasians (OR=2.20, 95% CI=1.48-3.25). Similarly, in the subgroup analysis by H. pylori status, a significantly increased risk was identified in H. pylori (+) populations (OR=3.68, 95%CI=2.07-6.52), but not in H. pylori(-) populations (OR=1.17, 95%CI=0.58-2.39). Conclusions: This pooled analysis suggested that the $PPAR{\gamma}$ Pro12Ala polymorphism could be an independent predictive risk factor for gastric cancer especially in H. pylori infected populations in Asians and Caucasians. Nevertheless, prospectively designed cohort studies are needed to further investigate gene-gene and gene-environment interactions to confirm the combined effects of $PPAR{\gamma}$ Pro12Ala polymorphisms and H. pylori infection on gastric cancer risk.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제15권5호
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• pp.2159-2163
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• 2014

Background: Prostate cancer is the most frequently occurring cancer among males in economically developed countries. Among the several risk factors that have been suggested, only age, ethnicity, diabetes, and family history of prostate cancer are well-established and primary prevention of this disease is limited. Prior studies had shown that dietary intake could be modified to reduce cancer risk. We conducted a hospital-based, casecontrol study to examine the association between dietary patterns and prostate cancer risk in Iran. Materials and Methods: A total of fifty patients with prostate cancer and a hundred controls underwent face-to-face interviews. Factor analysis was used to determine the dietary patterns. Multivariate logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results: We defined two major dietary patterns in this population: 'western diet'(high in sweets and desserts, organ meat, snacks, tea and coffee, French fries, salt, carbonated drinks, red or processed meat) and 'healthy diet' (high in legumes, fish, dairy products, fruits and fruit juice, vegetables, boiled potatoes, whole cereal and egg). Both Healthy and western pattern scores were divided into two categories (based on medians). Higher scores on Healthy pattern was marginally significantly related to decreased risk of prostate cancer (above median vs below median, OR =0.4, 95%CI=0.2-1.0). An increased risk of prostate cancer was observed with the higher scores on the Western pattern (above median vs below median, OR=4.0, 95%CI=1.5-11.0). Conclusions: The results of this study suggested that diet might be associated with prostate cancer among Iranian males.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제17권4호
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• pp.1875-1879
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• 2016

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. A very important factor in the timely treatment and prevention of progression is high breast cancer awareness. Rural women are at risk of latte stage breast cancer due to poor education and lack of access to medical facilities. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional-descriptive study was conducted on 266 women (out of 300) aged over 18 in rural areas of Zabol, Southeastern Iran during July 2015 to October 2015. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire that measured participant knowledge of breast cancer in four aspects (general awareness, risk factors, mammography, and symptoms). SPSS 22 was used for statistical analysis. Results: Out of 266 participants, age information was available for 261. The age range was between 19 and 62, with a mean of $27{\pm}2.1years$. Most participants (154, 57.9%) had an average overall awareness of breast cancer. In the general awareness dimension, most participants (130, 48.9%) had poor scores. Most (166, 62.4%) also had average awareness about risk factors and many (137, 51.5%) had good awareness about mammography. Most participants did not know that changes in breast shape (232, 88.2%), dimpling of breast skin (192, 72.3%) and nipple discharge (183, 69.6%) are the main symptoms of breast cancer. ANOVA statistical analysis showed a significant relationship between awareness level and participant education and occupation (P<0.05). Conclusions: This study indicated average awareness of participants about breast cancer. Since rural women have lower levels of education, it is recommended that educational courses with contents about breast cancer, its risk factors, and symptoms be held for these women.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제14권11호
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• pp.6591-6593
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• 2013

Background: Environmental tobacco smoking (ETS) significantly contributes to morbidity and mortality and is a known risk factor for lung cancer development in lifelong nonsmokers. The metabolite 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanol (NNAL) and its glucuronides (NNAL-Glucs) have now emerged as leading biomarkers for the study of carcinogen exposure in non-smokers exposed to ETS. Materials and Methods: We carried out our study on NNAL in the urine of non-smokers exposed to ETS and the association between ETS and lung cancer. Subjects were enrolled from 2008-2010. NNAL was analyzed for 74 non-smoking lung cancer and 85 healthy controls. The main objective of this study was to provide an estimate of the risk of lung cancer from exposure to ETS in the Korean population. Results: The mean NNAL concentration in urine was significantly lower in non-smoking patient groups (n=74) than in control groups (n=85) ($4.7{\pm}15.0$ pg/mg, $6.5{\pm}17.9$ pg/mg, respectively, Mann-Whitney U test, p<0.001). Conclusions: The urine NNAL of non-smoking patients with lung cancer was not elevated with regard to the non-smoking control group. This may be due to life-style changes after diagnosis. A prospective study will be needed to evaluate the association of NNAL and non-smoking lung cancer.