Our findings clearly indicate that there is good reason to study

Our findings clearly indicate that there is good reason to study reproductive outcome in the rubber industry in more detail. A study on spontaneous abortions and time to pregnancy (Joffe 1997), which assesses the couple’s fertility, is now under way in our cohorts. Male fertility in the rubber industry can be further studied with respect to sperm quality (Bonde et al. 1999; Spanó et al. 1998,

2000). The novel method of assessing the Y:X sperm chromosome ratio with FISH-technique is of special interest (Tiido et al. 2005). Such studies would also benefit from better exposure data, combining Selleck CH5183284 information from plant personnel records, subject’s reports, job-exposure matrices, and (for sperm studies) biomarkers of exposure. Acknowledgments In memoriam of Professor Lars Hagmar, who took part in the planning of the study and the writing of the first version of the manuscript. Jonas Björk and Håkan Lövkvist gave valuable assistance with the statistical modeling. We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation from the rubber plant personnel, and local trade union representatives, and from a reference group with representatives from the employers and The Industrial Workers’ Union. The Swedish Food Workers Union kindly provided member lists. This study was financially supported by the Swedish Council for Working

Life and Social Research (FAS) and the Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Sweden. The study was approved by the Ethical Committee, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University. 5-Fluoracil molecular weight Conflicts of Interest The authors have no competing financial interests. Open Access This article is distributed under the GF120918 datasheet terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which

permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. References Axelson O, Edling C, Andersson L (1983) Pregnancy outcome among women in a Swedish rubber plant. Scand J Work Environ Health 9(Suppl 2):79–83PubMed Balogh I, Bergendorf U, Hagmar L et al. (2003) Health risks, prevention and rehabilitation in the rubber industry. Report 2003–03–06 (in Swedish). Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Lund. Available at http://​www.​ymed.​lu.​se Bonde JP, Joffe M, Danscher G, et al (1999) Objectives, designs and populations of the European Asclepios study on occupational hazards to male reproductive capability. Scand J Work Environ Health 25(Suppl 1):49–61; discussion 76–8PubMed de Celis R, Feria-Velasco A, Gonzalez-Unzaga M (2000) Semen quality of workers occupationally exposed to hydrocarbons. Fertil Steril 73(2):221–8PubMedCrossRef Duty SM, Silva MJ, Barr DB, et al (2003) Phtalate exposure and human semen parameters. Epidemiology 14:269–77PubMedCrossRef Ema M, Miyawaki E (2001) Effects of monobutyl phthalate on reproductive function in pregnant and pseudopregnant rats.

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