O-106 Paternal occupational exposure to heavy metals and welding fumes and testicular germ cell tumors in sons in France

Introduction

Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in young men. The causes are largely unknown, although prenatal occupational and environmental exposures have been suggested. We investigated associations between paternal occupational exposure to heavy metals and welding fumes at birth and the risk of testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT) in their sons.

Material and Methods

Four hundred and fifty-four cases and 670 controls were included from TESTIS a French nationwide case-control study on TGCT. The INTEROCC job exposure matrix was used to assign occupational exposures (cadmium, chromium, iron, nickel, lead, and welding fumes) to the fathers’ jobs at birth, which we assumed as a proxy for exposure before and at conception. Odds ratios (ORs) for the risk of TGCT in adulthood were estimated using conditional logistic regression models for frequency-matched sets. Three complementary analytical approaches were used: 1) single-agent analysis, 2) analysis by group of exposures and 3) a principal component analysis (PCA).

Results

The proportion of paternal exposure to different heavy metals and welding fumes ranged from 0.7% (cadmium) to 11.8% (lead). The correlation between heavy metals and welding fumes was found to be between moderate (Spearman rho = 0.62) and high (0.99). No significant associations were observed between paternal occupational exposure to heavy metals and welding fumes at birth and the development of TGCT in their sons, irrespective of the analytical approach used. Based on the PCA, three principal components explained 93.5% of the cumulative variance and confirmed the finding of no associations. Analyses by TGCT subtype (seminoma and non-seminoma) did not alter these findings.

Conclusions

This study did not find any evidence of an association between paternal occupational exposure to heavy metals and welding fumes and TGCT risk in their sons.