Date of filling in this questionnaire or last update: 16/11/2020
1. JOB-EXPOSURE MATRICES
JEM name
OAsJEM
Institute
Inserm
Country
France
Contact person
Nicole Le Moual
Email
nicole.lemoual@inserm.fr
References (citation)
  • Le Moual N, Zock JP, Dumas O, Lytras T, Andersson E, Lillienberg L, Schlünssen V, Benke G, Kromhout H. Update of an Occupational Asthma-specific Job-Exposure Matrix to assess exposure to 30 specific agents. Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2018 ; 75:507-514.
References (weblinks)
  • http://oasjem.vjf.inserm.fr/ - https://oem.bmj.com/content/75/7/507
Year JEM was developed
2018
Agents
  • Dusts and Fibres
  • Solvents
  • Pesticides
  • Metals and Metal Oxides
  • Other Chemicals
Organic dusts
  • Animal dust (from living animals or hairs of animals, e.g. raw wool, furs of minks, etc.)
  • Flour dust
  • Plant dust (includes plants, fruits, vegetables, plant-borne materials such as natural rubber)
  • Textile dust
  • Wood dust (not specified)
Organic solvents, other than aliphatic, aromatic and chlorinated
  • Other (specify)
Organic solvents, other than aliphatic, aromatic and chlorinated | Specify: Other
organic solvents in general
Fungicides
  • Other (specify)
Fungicides | Specify: Other
fungicides (not specified)
Herbicides
  • Other (specify)
Herbicides | Specify: Other
herbicides (not specified)
Insecticides
  • Other (specify)
Insecticides | Specify: Other
herbicides (not specified)
Choose Metals and Metals Oxides
  • Other (specify)
Metals and Metal Oxides | Specify: Other
metal (unspecified)
Detergents and cleaning products
  • Cleaning products
  • Detergents
Isocyanates
  • Isocyanates
Occupation Axis
Yes
Coding system
  • ISCO 1988
Coding system (Number of digits used)
4
Industry Axis
No
Intensity
Yes
Intensity categories/units
  • Semi-quantitative (specify categories and cut-off points, if applicable )
Semi-quantitative (specify categories and cut-off points, if applicable )
’high’ (high probability of exposure and moderate-to-high intensity); ’medium’ (low-to-moderate probability or low intensity); and ’unexposed’
Probability
No
Duration
No
Frequency
No
Peaks
No
Data source(s)
  • Expert assessment
  • Other
Data source(s) | Other
  • data from the litterature
Studies to which the JEM has been applied: Texts
  • EGEA (France), ECRHS (Europe), MACS (Australia), Lifelines (The Netherlands) ...
Studies to which the JEM has been applied: Links
  • http://oasjem.vjf.inserm.fr/user_list.php
Relation with other JEMs
It is an update of the previous Asthma-specific JEM (http://asthmajem.vjf.inserm.fr/) - The experts' decisions were based on assessments from existing JEMs and especially the asthma-specific JEM, Northern europe N-JEM and ALOHA JEM and on recent literature.
Validation studies done: Texts
  • Due to the lack of a gold standard, a formal validation of the OAsJEM estimates is not possible, which is a classical limitation of JEMs.
Availability
  • Upon request
  • Other
Availability | Other (specify)
available on the website : http://oasjem.vjf.inserm.fr/users.htm#
Strengths
The major strength of this OAsJEM is that initial exposure assessments were undertaken by experts independently from each other and final evaluations were taken by consensus, through a standardised procedure. Furthermore, we incorporated improvements based on other JEMs, such as ALOHA and Northern-JEM developed by experts from our team, to evaluate exposure assessment to pesticides and acrylates or epoxy resins, respectively. We finally checked that for all jobs with an expert re-evaluation step the default exposure assessment for a specific agent was the most likely one. In addition, the standardisation of an expert re-evaluation step with precisely written recommendations may be helpful for non-experts.
Weaknesses
As with any JEM, non-differential misclassification remains but is somewhat reduced by incorporating up-to-date knowledge from eight experts for the evaluated agents. We acknowledge that the additional expert assessment step may be time-consuming and money-consuming which may induce difficulties in applying the method in large epidemiological studies. However, the expert step is mostly intended to improve precision of exposure estimates in studies of moderate size and limited power. Our list of 30 asthmagens was not exhaustive but was in accordance with most agents identified in recent papers.