Abstract
As part of an epidemiologic study of neuropsychological and renal effects of occupational exposure to organic solvents, estimates of cumulative exposure to naphtha were derived for workers at an automobile fuel-injector manufacturing plant. The approach to exposure estimation was relatively unusual in three respects: (1) a marked association between indoor naphtha air concentration and outdoor temperature was modeled and applied to detailed historical temperature data to calculate cumulative exposure estimates; (2) the large number of investigator-generated air samples allowed the use of analyses of variance to compare alternative job-grouping schemes; and (3) the young age of the plant and few process changes allowed for historical exposure estimates with a high degree of confidence. The derived estimates of cumulative exposure appear to offer a firm basis for epidemiologic analyses of exposure-health outcome relationships.