The offspring of respectable workers, they dressed neatly, were obedient, and conformed to the stereotypes of the time, with Peter helping Daddy and Jane giving Mummy a hand in the kitchen.
The risk was higher for the offspring of AC workers (OR = 7.4; 95% CI, 1.9-28.1).
There were no significantly raised risks for the offspring of female workers monitored for internal exposure.
Prior data comes mainly from studies of cancer risk in offspring of nuclear workers who are predominantly male.
Researchers theorize that the same chemicals that reduce the sex ratio in the offspring of male workers (Jongbloet et al. 2001) may cause similar effects in populations that are chronically exposed to low levels of these same pollutants.
The objective of this study was to determine whether paternal occupational exposure to chlorophenol fungicides and their dioxin contaminants is associated with childhood cancer in the offspring of sawmill workers.
In two smaller studies, low sex ratios were reported among offspring of male workers that produced dioxin contaminated chemicals, 2,4,5-trichlorophenol (TrCP) or 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxy acetic acid (2,4,5-T).
An investigation of the effect of a variety of chemicals on the sex ratio of chemical industry workers in Japan was, in some ways, inconclusive (Okubo et al. 2000): Although researchers found that exposure to chemical materials may have affected the sex ratio of the offspring of the workers, they could not indicate with certainty which chemical materials may have been responsible.
Assuming that familial dietary habits are mainly controlled by the parents, and that physical workers need more high caloric food to compensate for their high work-related energy expenditure [ 6], their children may also consume more high caloric food compared with the adolescent offspring of sedentary workers.
The cohort study (Heacock et al. 2000) was based in the offspring of the male workers in the British Columbia sawmill workers cohort studied by Demers et al. (2006).
