Half-century archives of occupational medical data on French nuclear workers: a dusty warehouse or gold mine for epidemiological research?

This article discusses the availability and completeness of medical data on workers from the AREVA NC Pierrelatte nuclear plant and their possible use in epidemiological research on cardiovascular and metabolic disorders related to internal exposure to uranium. We created a computer database from files on 394 eligible workers included in an ongoing nested case-control study from a larger cohort of 2897 French nuclear workers. For each worker, we collected records of previous employment, job positions, job descriptions, medical visits, and blood test results from medical history. The dataset counts 9,471 medical examinations and 12,735 blood test results. For almost all of the parameters relevant for research on cardiovascular risk, data completeness and availability is over 90%, but it varies with time and improves in the latest time period. In the absence of biobanks, collecting and computerising available good-quality occupational medicine archive data constitutes a valuable alternative for epidemiological and aetiological research in occupational health. Biobanks rarely contain biological samples over an entire worker's carrier and medical data from nuclear industry archives might make up for unavailable biomarkers that could provide information on cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

[Ambrosia, Franseria, Xanthium from the Bonaparte Herbarium]. / Ambrosia, Franseria, Xanthium de l'herbier Bonaparte.

Recently, French Association for Ragweed Study (AFEDA) founders published, in French, a book "Ambrosia, ragweed, biological pollutants". This association was founded in 1982. The authors referred to Bonaparte Herbarium set up in the Université Claude-Bernard Lyon 1. This herbarium is ranking second in France and seventh in the world. There were three aims for this work: to set up, for this herbarium, a complete list of different species of Ambrosia, Franseria and their pollen grains and to study with them Xanthium whose pollen grains look like Ambrosia, to establish a chronological order for Ambrosia that were collected in Europe and in some countries of the New World, to compare some pollen grains of Ambrosia and Xanthium (scanning electronic microscope). Good state plants in spite of about a century of conservation could be selected. They were photographied and some pollens so. The consultation of this herbarium brought a better morphological knowledge of different species of Ambrosia, Franseria and Xanthium, (plants and pollen grains). The authors were able to broadcast this knowledge to scientists and interested public through their book.