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Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate whether the exposure to a low dose of nickel could determinate a variation in levels of progesterone in outdoor workers., Materials and Methods: Two hundred sixty one subjects were divided by sex, task, age, seniority, and cigarette smoking habit. For each workers was evaluated the dose of blood progesterone and urinary nickel.The statistical analysis was performed., Results: The Pearson correlation showed a statistically significant correlation between urinary nickel levels and progesterone. The multiple linear regression showed a significant correlation between progesterone and urinary nickel in the total sample and in the subgroups of smokers and workers with tasks of traffic direction., Conclusions: The results of our study suggest that occupational exposure to low doses of nickel present in urban pollution may influence to progesterone levels in outdoor workers., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest: None declared., (Copyright © 2021 American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.)

Introduction: The aim of our study is to compare liver damage in "outdoor" environment technicians, a category occupationally exposed, and in "indoor" workers., Materials and Methods: We studied 142 male technicians of the environment exposed to urban pollution and 142 male "indoor" workers not exposed. We compared mean and standard deviation of the following liver parameters: glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (GOT), glutamic pyruvic transaminase (GPT), gamma-glutamyl-traspeptidasi (γGT) and alkaline phosphatase (PHA), total bilirubin (TB) and direct (DB). We made the two groups comparable for age, length of service, BMI, alcohol consumption and smoking habits, and excluded the workers who presented confounding factors., Results: We found statistically significant differences about the levels of γGT, PHA, GPT and albumin between the "outdoor" workers exposed and the "indoor" control group. In the outdoor group we observed statistically significant values, GPT (51.8 ± 30.6 I.U./l vs. 30 ± 22.3 I.U./l; p = 0.000), γ-GT (42.2 ± 29.4 I.U./l vs. 22.4 ± 20.7 I.U./l; p = 0.000) and PHA (75.7 ± 20.6 I.U./l vs. 59.1 ± 19.6 I.U./l; p= 0.000) compared to the unexposed group. No statistically significant difference emerged between the averages for the values of GOT (25.3 ± 20.7 I.U./l vs. 26 ± 17.7 I.U./l; p = 0.736) in two groups., Conclusions: It clearly emerges that the contaminants may alter the values of liver tests after prolonged exposure.