The European Occupational Exposome Mega Cohort Consortium (OMega-X) was established as a long-term resource to support large-scale coordinated cohort analysis to advance knowledge regarding the health impacts of complex working-life exposures.
Twenty-four cohorts based in eight European countries, as well as multi-country studies, containing >20 million participants, currently form the Consortium. · Industrial/occupational and population-based cohorts range in size from a few hundred to thousands of workers; large-scale register-based general-population cohorts comprise millions of workers. Most cohorts were established and followed participants since the year 2000; some follow workers from the 1950s to the 1990s. Job-history data primarily capture the working lifetime or follow-up period.
The Consortium is supported by online inventories and tools. The European job-exposure matrix (EuroJEM) provides harmonized exposure assessment information by job code for airborne infectious agents, chemical and particle exposures, heat stress, noise, physical workload, precarious employment, psychosocial exposures, and solar ultraviolet radiation.
Analyses have to date examined a broad range of occupational exposures in relation to cancer; cardiometabolic, musculoskeletal, neurodegenerative, and respiratory diseases; mental disorders; and work-participation outcomes. · Application procedures for researchers to propose a new analysis or for new cohorts to join the Consortium are available.