A union representing workers across the USA and Canada has issued an action call to its union reps on occupational breast cancer risks. The steelworkers’ union USW issued the hazards alert after a paper published in November 2012 warned a ‘toxic soup’ of chemical exposures in agriculture, plastics, food packaging, metal manufacture and the bar and gambling industry was placing women at an increased risk of breast cancer. The USW hazard alert calls on union reps to “educate our members about the health hazards of chemicals; use our collective voice to win health and safety improvements in our workplaces, such as substituting less hazardous chemicals or using engineering and design controls to prevent worker exposures to harmful chemicals; and tell our elected representatives that we support reforming outdated chemical laws.”
