[Trends of lung cancer mortality among employed men according to their occupation]

The objective of this article is to describe the changes in lung cancer mortality among employed men over the period 1976-2005, according to their activity sector and socio-professional categories. This work was done as part of the Cosmop monitoring program. The socio-professional data come from the DADS panel constituted by INSEE. For each person of the panel, the vital status was searched until 2005 by matching the national file of medical causes of death managed by Inserm's CépiDC (Epidemiological Center for Mortality by Medical Causes). The results show large disparities in mortality among male employees by activity sector. Over the period 1976-2005, the rates vary twofold between the sector with the highest rate (Construction, 98 p.100,000 person-years) and the sector with the lowest rate (Education, 43 p.100,000 person-years). For most of the activity sectors, mortality rates increased between the periods 1976-1985 and 1986-1995 before decreasing over the period 1996-2005. Some activity sectors stand out by an increase in mortality over the study period. This is the case for construction, education and public administration. It is essential to continue the surveillance of cancers by social category and activity sector. This will permit us to identify sectors in which specific preventive actions should be carried out, particularly on smoking for lung cancer.