The Human Bitumen Study.



Recently, the Human Bitumen Study has been finished (Schlüter, 2011[8]). Including 500 workers from more than 80 construction sites it represents the world-wide largest study on adverse health effects caused by bitumen. The study answers a question that has been controversially discussed since decades: Bitumen exposed workers do not show higher levels of DNA damage than unexposed individuals. On the other hand bitumen workers showed irritative effects in the lower airways (Raulf-Heimsoth et al., 2011[5]). To give our readers an overview over the recent developments we summarized the most important results of the Human Bitumen Study in the table(Tab. 1) below. (References in Table 1: van Thriel and Marchan, 2012[10]; Raulf-Heimsoth et al., 2011[6]; Breuer et al., 2011[1]; Spickenheuer et al., 2011[9]; Pesch et al., 2011[3]; Raulf-Heimsoth et al., 2011[5]; Marczynski et al., 2011[2]; Welge et al., 2011[11]; Rihs et al., 2011[7]; Raulf-Heimsoth et al., 2011[4])

Table 1

Key results from the Human Bitumen Study (reproduced with permission of the Archives of Toxicology; van Thriel and Marchan, 2012)