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PETROMAKS2-Stort program petroleum

Offshore worker heliport database cohort and new studies on exposure-related health

Alternative title: Kohort av offshorearbeidere basert på helikoptertransport og nye studier om helseutfall relatert til eksponering

Awarded: NOK 6.0 mill.

The project will provide more precise and reliable insight into potential exposure-related risks of disease among Norwegian offshore petroleum workers who have been active in recent years. The project will establish a new study population of offshore workers with experience from the period 1980-2021, with emphasis on the last 20 years. Establishment of the study population is based on collection of register data and questionnaire data. Collection of register data includes reception of transport and work history from the oil companies' personnel registries, which forms the main basis for the study population. In addition, a supplementary data collection will be carried out through an electronic survey among the offshore workers. This will provide more complete data on work history, as well as updated data on lifestyle factors among Norwegian offshore workers after the 1980s. Register data and questionnaire data form the main sources of what we call the "Heliport cohort". The Heliport cohort will be linked to the already existing Offshore cohort, which was established through a large paper questionnaire survey in 1998 (with information on work history and lifestyle factors). Together they constitute an extended cohort of employees who have been offshore since 1965 until today. After the establishment of the extended cohort, data on cancer will be supplied from the Cancer Registry. The project will use updated exposure estimates and information on cancer incidence to investigate two scientific issues that are important for the companies, workers, regulatory authorities and for the international scientific community: 1) Does benzene exposure measured as a time-dependent variable and occurring at low levels increase the risk of lymphomas, leukaemia and related cancers? 2) Does benzene exposure measured as a time-dependent variable lead to increased lung cancer risk when smoking habits are adjusted for? Given approval from the Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics (REC), funding, and in understanding with the reference group, the cohort will be able to be connected to other national health registries and data sources, thereby providing the opportunity to evaluate the effect of HSE measures. The project will, after linkage to health registries, involve handling of sensitive individual information, and therefore great emphasis is placed on privacy. Due to recently stricter data protection regulations, much of 2021 has been spent on securing the contractual framework and ethical and legal approvals from the oil companies, the REC and the Data Protection Officer at Oslo University Hospital (OUS). In September 2021, a PhD candidate started and concentrate his work on examination of the abovementioned scientific questions. The development of the project has been assisted by experts at the University of Bergen (exposure assessment), University of Oslo (epidemiology and statistics), The National Institute of Occupational Health (STAMI), and the National Trauma Registry (anaesthesiology and traumatology). The epidemiological and statistical analyses will be conducted in collaboration with some of the world's leading specialists in the field, from the U.S. National Cancer Institute, Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY, U.S.A.), the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University (Netherlands), and the Occupational Cancer Research Centre (Toronto, Canada).

The project will provide more precise and reliable insight in potential exposure-related risks of disease among Norwegian offshore petroleum workers who have been active in recent years. The results will be achieved by establishing a new cohort based on detailed information on their work-history and transport between heliports on the Norwegian mainland and offshore platoforms (hereafter, the heliport cohort). The cohort data will be used to perform series of studies of health outcome among offshore workers. The first two studies will use updated estimates of exposure (Research Council on-going project no. 280904) and information on cancer incidence to address two scientific questions that are important to the companies, workers, regulatory agencies, and for the international scientific community: 1) Does benzene exposure measured as a time-dependent variable and occurring at low levels increase the risk of lymphomas, leukaemia and related cancers? 2) Does benzene exposure measured as a time-dependent variable lead to increased lung cancer risk when smoking habits are adjusted for? The challenge is to obtain and develop quality-controlled cohort data, can be linked to national registries containing individual health outcome. The project involves handling of sensitive individual information, and will do so in a way that secures personal secrecy. The development of the project has been assisted by experts at the University of Bergen (exposure assessment), University of Oslo (epidemiology and statistics), The National Institute of Occupational Health (STAMI), the National Trauma Registry, and international experts. The epidemiological and statistical analyses will be conducted in collaboration with some of the world's leading specialists in the field, from the U.S. National Cancer Institute, Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY, U.S.A.), the Utrecht University (Netherlands), and the Occupational Cancer Research Centre (Toronto, Canada).

Funding scheme:

PETROMAKS2-Stort program petroleum