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Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study (DEMS)

In March 2012, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) completed a retrospective cohort mortality and nested case-control study within the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study (DEMS) cohort.

The researchers investigated risk of lung cancer in relation to quantitative measures of historical exposure to diesel exhaust, after taking into account smoking and other lung cancer risk factors among 12,315 workers at eight non-metal mining facilities. Elevated mortality from other causes among diesel exhaust-exposed miners was examined as well. An extensive effort to characterize current and historical exposures to diesel exhaust and to develop estimates of personal exposures was an intrinsic part of the study. Their results were published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The methods for this effort were published in five papers in the Annals of Occupational Hygiene.

DEMS II, launched by the NCI in 2016, extends the follow-up of the original cohort by an additional 18 years and expands the nested case-control study of lung cancer by conducting interviews with next of kin for all newly identified lung cancer deaths and matched controls.

For more information about DEMS and DEMS II, contact Dr. Debra Silverman. 

Study Publications

Information for Journalists

To request an interview with a DCEG investigator, contact the NCI Press Office:

E-mail:
ncipressofficers@
mail.nih.gov

Phone: 240-760-6600

Nested Case-Control Study

Cohort Mortality Study

Exposure Assessment

Editorials, Letters-to-the-Editor and Response

Requests for Study Data

NCI and NIOSH believe that transparency and public health and scientific advancements are best served when, for an appropriate and legitimate public health purpose, data are shared with researchers and other public health agencies in an open, timely, and appropriate way. The Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study (DEMS) has ended and has fulfilled the objectives reported in the research protocol. Requestors interested in the data supporting the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study (DEMS) can access these data through the Research Data Center (RDC) at the National Center for Health Statistics by following the standard RDC procedures for accessing non-NCHS Restricted Data (https://www.cdc.gov/rdc/b1datatype/dt130.htm). Data requestors must have a legitimate public health or scientific need for the data and must agree to comply with certain restrictions on the use of the data.

Interested parties are required to submit an application and sign a data use agreement prior to receiving any dataset. To receive an application for the DEMS– Case-Control Study data, send an email to Dr. Debra Silverman. Please include "Request for DEMS – Case-Control Study Data," in the subject line, and in the body of the email include all contact information.

In addition, NCI is providing the opportunity to download the exposure data and documentation underlying the exposure assessment methods described in the five published exposure assessment papers shown above in the Study Publications. To access exposure data underlying the exposure assessment papers, you may download (1) a zip archive of the data and (2) the documentation.

For more information, contact Dr. Debra Silverman.

Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch - Research Areas

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