This groundbreaking guide from the US autoworkers’ union UAW, issued in 1980 [editor’s note: reprinted in 1992], gave workers the information to interpret epidemiological studies for themselves, identify their strengths and weaknesses and to identify work-related cancer risks for themselves.

The initiative came as the UAW leadership declared “war on workplace cancer” in response to an alarming series of cancer mortality studies conducted among autoworkers by government, company, and union epidemiologists.

These studies revealed an “increased proportion of cancer deaths” among “workers in machining operations, foundry workers, and workers in vehicle assembly plants”; the epidemiologists believed those deaths were related to occupational carcinogen exposure.

The Case of the Workplace Killers: A Manual for Cancer Detectives on the Job, UAW, November 1980.

[For a review of UAW’s ‘war on workplace cancer’, see: Josiah Rector. Environmental Justice at Work: The UAW, the War on Cancer, and the Right to Equal Protection from Toxic Hazards in Postwar America, Journal of American History, volume 101, number 2, pages 480-502, September 2014. Full text of the article is posted online here.]