Mortality experience of women in the high nickel alloys industry 

We present the mortality experience for the subset of women (n=2,877) from a large epidemiologic study of production and fabrication workers (n=31,165) employed in the high nickel alloys industry throughout the United States.  Mortality was evaluated for 61 cause specific categories with emphasis given to malignant neoplasms.  In addition to comparing the mortality of the workers to the general US female population, comparisons were made to local populations in geographic proximity to each of the plants. 
Workers were followed through 1988.  Although there were some difficulties in tracing women due to name changes, comprehensive follow-up was obtained when using multiple sources of information. Our methods resulted in resolving vital status for over 95% of the women.  This is comparable to that of the male cohort.  The type of jobs differed between the genders.  In general, males worked in several work areas, whereas females worked predominantly in two work areas; that of grinding and allocated services.  Considerable variation was noted among the study plants with respect to the percent of female production workers in the workforce. 
Over 700 deaths were identified, including 203 cancers.  No increased risk was identified for any of the site specific cancers.  An elevated risk of ischemic heart disease was noted among women in grinding when compared with the US population which was not evident in analyses using the local populations.  This suggests that the finding is probably due to factors related to geographic variability in mortality patterns rather than occupational exposure.