Thioether excretion of workers exposed to bitumen fumes.

The excretion of thioethers was determined in the urine of workers involved in road paving operations and in the preparation of asphalt mixing in an asphalt plant. An occupationally nonexposed group served as control. From the results it was observed that there was no significant difference in urinary thioether levels between the exposed and nonexposed groups, however, smokers of both exposed groups had significantly higher urinary thioether levels than the nonexposed smoking workers. These results suggested that higher urinary thioether excretion could be only due to a difference in smoking behaviour. There were also significant differences in urinary thioether levels between the exposed smoking and nonsmoking workers. The authors suggest that these workers have a low mutagenic/carcinogenic risk and smoking is responsible for the majority of thioether excretion, as has been found by other investigators.