Occupational Cancer Exposure Worker Estimation Service Launched... Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency Provides Information on 20 Carcinogens Across 233 Industries

Example of K-CAREX screen.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] A program that can estimate the number of workers exposed to carcinogens in industrial sites has been developed and is now in service.

The Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency’s Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute (Director Kim Eun-ah) announced on the 26th that it has developed K-CAREX (Korean CARcinogen EXposure), which can estimate the scale of exposure to human carcinogens and the number of exposed workers, and is providing it online.

CAREX is a program developed by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH) by combining carcinogens registered by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) with the number of exposed workers by industry in Finland.

"K-CAREX" is a Korean-style program estimating the number of workers exposed to carcinogens by industry. It estimates the number of workers exposed to specific carcinogens through big data analysis and expert evaluation of work environment measurement data, special health examination data, and work environment surveys held by the institute.

This program enables estimation of the scale of exposure and the number of exposed workers for 20 types of human carcinogens across 233 industries.

The exposure criteria consider the latency period of solid cancers after carcinogen exposure, using 2010 as the reference year to estimate the worker population and the exposure rate (%) to carcinogens.

In particular, it visualizes exposure estimation information among carcinogens, making it easy to compare the 20 types of carcinogens.

When a user selects a sub-industry category, the program shows information on the scale of worker exposure to 20 carcinogens (such as 1,3-butadiene, benzene, formaldehyde, etc.).

For example, if the sub-industry ‘(861) Hospital’ is selected, it is estimated that 12.0% (45,390 people) were exposed to radiation, 3.53% (13,333 people) to formaldehyde, and 2.5% (9,456 people) to ethylene oxide.

However, since the estimation information does not include exposure intensity, process, or job information, limitations must be considered when using it, and careful interpretation is required.

The program can be accessed via the institute’s website under the ‘Disease Incidence Visualization’ menu.

This program was developed in collaboration with Professor Ko Dong-hee’s team at Catholic Kwandong University.

It helps prioritize and manage occupational cancer prevention policies in the field of industrial health by providing data on carcinogen exposure status, the impact on occupational cancers, and predicting the effects of work environment management.

Additionally, by providing carcinogen estimation information by industry, it is expected to drastically reduce the large-scale budget needed for analyzing carcinogen exposure scales by industry.

Kim Eun-ah, Director of the Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute, said, “The estimated information on carcinogen exposure scale by industry can be used in various disease prevention projects,” adding, “We will continue to focus on research and content advancement so that all working people can be healthy.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.