This study investigated the effect of dispatch frequency on blood cadmium levels and the effect of blood cadmium levels on hypertension in male firefighters in a metropolitan city.

We conducted a retrospective longitudinal study of male firefighters who completed the regular health checkups, including a health examination survey and blood cadmium measurements. We followed them for 3 years. To investigate the effect of dispatch frequency on blood cadmium levels and the effect of blood cadmium levels on hypertension, we estimated the short-term (model 1) and long-term (model 2) effects of exposure and hypothesized a reversed causal pathway model (model 3) for sensitivity analysis. Sequential conditional mean models were fitted using generalized estimating equations, and the odds ratios (ORs) and the respective 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated for hypertension for log-transformed (base 2) blood cadmium levels and quartiles.

Using the lowest category of dispatch frequency as a reference, we observed that the highest category showed an increase in blood cadmium levels of 1.879 (95% CI: 0.673, 3.086) μg/dL and 0.708 (95% CI: 0.023, 1.394) μg/dL in models 2 and 3, respectively. In addition, we observed that doubling the blood cadmium level significantly increased the odds of hypertension in model 1 (OR: 1.772; 95% CI: 1.046, 3.003) and model 3 (OR: 4.288; 95% CI: 1.110, 16.554). Using the lowest quartile of blood cadmium levels as a reference, the highest quartile showed increased odds of hypertension in model 1 (OR: 2.968; 95% CI: 1.121, 7.861) and model 3 (OR: 33.468; 95% CI: 1.881, 595.500).

We found that dispatch frequency may affect blood cadmium levels in male firefighters, and high blood cadmium levels may influence hypertension in a dose-response manner.