| Abstract: | ![]()
A case-control study has been conducted to determine the association between employment as a fire fighter and congenital heart defects among the offspring. Cases were fathers of all children born between 1979 and 1986 in Ontario, Canada, who were diagnosed with a cardiac congenital anomaly during the first year of life (n = 9340). Matched controls (n = 9340), defined as fathers whose child did not have a congenital anomaly, were randomly selected from the Ontario birth certificate file. In order to identify those fathers who had been employed as a fire fighter, the cases and controls were linked to a cohort of Metropolitan Toronto fire fighters. Eleven cases and nine controls worked as fire fighters, giving an odds ratio of 1.22 (95 percent confidence interval 0.46–3.33). This study had sufficient power to detect the level of risk reported in one previous study; however, these results do not support a hypothesis of elevated risk of cardiac congenital anomalies among the offspring of fire fighters. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc. |
