Objective To comprehensively analyze the correlation between coke oven emissions and death of occupational lung cancer, and provide scientific basis for effective intervention measures and prevention decisions.

Methods The published articles on occupational lung cancer caused by coke oven emissions were searched from the PubMed, CNKI, VIP, Wanfang data and Web of Science databases. The effective data from these literatures was analyzed using a meta-analysis of binary variables with the relative risk of mortality (RR) as the effect size. Stata 12.0 software was used for statistic analysis.

Results Nine literatures of cohort studies were involved, including four English literatures and five Chinese literatures. Using the random effect model, total relative risk effect size was 2.24(95%CI: 1.75-2.87, Z=6.42, P < 0.05), indicating that the mortality of workers in the group exposed to coke oven emissions was higher than that of the control group. In subgroup analysis, the published year, country, follow-up time and NOS score were the sources of heterogeneity. Funnel plot method, Begg method and Egger's method results showed that there was no publication bias in our research and the result was stable.

Conclusion The mortality rate of occupational lung cancer caused by coke oven emissions is high, and coke oven workers should take effective measures to reduce the exposure of coke oven emissions.