Avoidable workplace or environmental factors contribute to thousands of cases of breast cancer each year, according to a report in Hazards magazine. Author Andrew Watterson of Stirling University, reviewing the evidence, noted: “If environmental and occupational factors – which employers already have a legal duty to control – contribute even as little as approximately two per cent to the incidence of this disease, to speculate crudely, action against them could reduce mortality by 300 deaths per year. Cutting exposure of the population as a whole to toxic substances and processes would also have an as yet unquantifiable but positive effect on mortality and morbidity of that population.”
Industry and breast cancer, Hazards, number 62, April-June 1998 [not online].