Sensitivity of the relation between cumulative magnetic field exposure and brain cancer mortality to choice of monitoring data grouping scheme

We examined the effectiveness of alternative grouping strategies with respect to cumulative exposure to magnetic fields and brain cancer mortality among electric utility workers. We applied a statistically optimal job- exposure matrix to calculate cumulative exposure over full work histories. We studied the sensitivity of the exposure-disease relation by assigning an array of different quantitative exposure estimates based on six schemes for grouping exposure measurements. The quantitative relation between cumulative magnetic field exposure and brain cancer mortality appeared to be sensitive to the choice of grouping scheme, with the optimized grouping scheme indicating stronger relations than standard schemes.