Texaco Mortality Study: II. Patterns of mortality among white males by specific job groups

While an earlier report on the Texaco Mortality Study cohort showed no statistically significant elevations for any cause of death for the white males, it did not preclude any excess risk of mortality within subgroups of workers. In this study, an employee's complete job history was used to determine his work categories, and patterns of mortality were examined for the more common job categories. All of the job categories examined showed deficits for mortality overall, and the patterns seen were similar to those for the entire cohort. Significant elevations were seen in pancreas cancer mortality for office and managerial people and in leukemia mortality for pipefitters and boilermakers. Other elevations of particular interest based on five or more deaths were brain cancer for laboratory workers and benign neoplasms in pipefitters and boilermakers. These associations were examined by latency and years worked, and no consistently positive associations were seen. It was not possible to take into account calendar time of exposure in this type of analysis, nor could any specific chemicals or levels of exposure be associated with the job categories where the standardized mortality ratios were elevated.