BENZENE AND CORTISOL: RELATIONSHIP IN WORKERS EXPOSED TO OUTDOOR POLLUTION

Introduction: The purpose of our study is to assess whether individual exposure tolow-dose benzene in urban air may affect the plasma concentrations of cortisol in apopulation of outdoor workers in a large Italian city.Materials and Methods: From a population of 1594 workers, 100 outdoor workers wereselected. For each worker, a blood sampling was performed to measure benzene andcortisol. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to verify the normality of distribution ofthe different variables. On the total sample, student T tests were performed for 2mode variables (sex, smoke and job) and ANOVA test for variables with more than 2modes (age and seniority). Pearson's correlation index between the variables in thetotal sample and after division on the basis of sex, smoking habit and manners wasevaluated. Were considered significant results with p values below 0.05.Results: Our study did not show statistically significant correlations between bloodbenzene levels and cortisol in none of the groups studied.Discussion: Further studies are needed to confirm the existence of possible significantassociation between occupational exposure to benzene and cortisol levels alteration.