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This year marks 30 years of close collaboration between a consortium of institutions, namely, the Northwest Public Health Research Center, Saint-Petersburg (NWPHRC); the Institute of Community Medicine (ICM) of UiT (The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø); the National Institute of Occupational Health (NIOH), Oslo; the University Hospital of Northern Norway (UNN) at Tromsø; and McMaster University (MU), Hamilton, ON, Canada. During the early years of cooperation, Dr. Chashchin was the Director of the Scientific Laboratory of the North-West Public Health Centre Branch of the NWPHRC located in the town of Kirovks in the Murmansk Region. The primary focus of this long-standing collaboration was to assess and address issues that are important for maintaining the health of the population living in the border areas of Russia and Norway and included the reduction of occupational health risks among workers employed in mining, metallurgical and machine-building enterprises located in the north-western region of Norway and the adjoining Kola Peninsula in Russia. These industrial activities constituted essential components of the local industries. The ongoing Russian-Norwegian cooperation in the field of occupational medicine is an excellent example of the effective combination of intellectual potential and research technologies of multiple countries. It has resulted in the development of a scientifically based set of measures for practical implementation, contributing to the improvement of working conditions and preservation of the health of workers employed at enterprises where the joint research was carried out.

Background: Although predictors of contaminants in serum or whole blood are usually examined by chemical groups (e.g., POPs, toxic and/or essential elements; dietary sources), principal component analysis (PCA) permits consideration of both individual substances and combined variables., Objectives: Our study had two primary objectives: (i) Characterize the sources and predictors of a suite of eight PCBs, four organochlorine (OC) pesticides, five essential and five toxic elements in serum and/or whole blood of pregnant women recruited as part of the Mother-and-Child Contaminant Cohort Study conducted in Northern Norway (The MISA study); and (ii) determine the influence of personal and social characteristics on both dietary and contaminant factors., Methods: Recruitment and sampling started in May 2007 and continued for the next 31 months until December 2009. Blood/serum samples were collected during the 2nd trimester (mean: 18.2 weeks, range 9.0-36.0). A validated questionnaire was administered to obtain personal information. The samples were analysed by established laboratories employing verified methods and reference standards. PCA involved Varimax rotation, and significant predictors (p≤0.05) in linear regression models were included in the multivariable linear regression analysis., Results: When considering all the contaminants, three prominent PCA axes stood out with prominent loadings of: all POPs; arsenic, selenium and mercury; and cadmium and lead. Respectively, in the multivariate models the following were predictors: maternal age, parity and consumption of freshwater fish and land-based wild animals; marine fish; cigarette smoking, dietary PCA axes reflecting consumption of grains and cereals, and food items involving hunting. PCA of only the POPs separated them into two axes that, in terms of recently published findings, could be understood to reflect longitudinal trends and their relative contributions to summed POPs., Conclusions: The linear combinations of variables generated by PCA identified prominent dietary sources of OC groups and of prominent toxic elements and highlighted the importance of maternal characteristics., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.)