The Health and Safety Executive is grossly under-estimating the real incidence of occupational cancer in the UK, a major new report suggests. The lead author of ‘Environmental and occupational causes of cancer: A review of recent scientific evidence,’ published this week by the Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, dismisses as ‘pointless’ and ‘counterproductive’ the 1981 estimates by Richard Doll and Richard Peto used by HSE to calculate occupational cancer numbers in the UK.

Richard Clapp, Genevieve Howe, Molly Jacobs Lefevre. Environmental and occupational causes of cancer: A review of recent Scientific literature. Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, University of Massachusetts Lowell, September 2005. News release, 19 September 2005, executive summary and full report [pdf].