The European Commission has announced new ‘binding occupational exposure limits’ for 13 cancer-causing substances in a move the Europe-wide union body ETUC has called a ‘cancer victory’ for workers.

“This is important news for the health of workers across Europe,” said Esther Lynch, ETUC confederal secretary, “and a hard-won victory for workers and their trade unions. Although some of the exposure limits are inadequate, and some substances are not included, this is a significant step forward. After 12 years of inaction the European Commission has finally listened to demands to protect workers better from work-related cancer.”

She added: “I am expecting the Commission to put forward exposure limits for at least 15 more substances by the end of the year.”

ETUC notes that exposure limits do not replace employers’ obligation to eliminate and substitute toxic substances in the workplace. It says 100,000 people die in the EU every year from preventable work-related cancers, adding it has called repeatedly for limits to be extended to more cancer-causing substances.

The Commission’s proposal for binding occupational exposure limits for 13 substances brings to 16 the total number of substances covered by exposure limits under EU law.

One of the new limits considered by unions to be inadequate is a 0.1mg/m³ limit for respirable silica. This is the UK’s current standard, but twice the 0.05mg/m³ standard being introduced in the US and four times Canada’s 0.025mg/m³ limit. In the EU, Finland, Italy and Portugal already have a silica standard at or below the 0.05mg/m³ US limit.

Steven Wodka, a leading US occupational disease lawyer, said he was concerned about the proposed limits for some of the other substances, citing the case of ortho-toluidine, a potent cause of bladder cancer.

He said the EC-recommended standard was never exceeded at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company plant in Niagara Falls, USA. However the plant still had a bladder cancer rate more than six times the expected level in the highest exposed groups, and more than double the expected level across the workforce.

• More on the debate about a new silica standard.

Voting in the European Parliament, public opinion and credible, independent scientific research appear increasingly irrelevant to the European Commission (EC) when it comes to the protection of public health and the environment, the global farm and food union has charged.

Peter Rossman, of the plough-to-plate union federation IUF, writing in Social Europe, noted: “An estimated 100,000 workers die each year in the EU from work-related cancers, prompting the ETUC to demand stronger laws and enforcement. Yet we are experiencing a generalised retreat from regulation.”

Rossman cites the case of glyphosate – the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and the world’s most widely used herbicide – whose authorisation for use in the EU is currently up for renewal. He says despite growing evidence of cancer, reproductive and other health risks, the EC has proposed renewing the approval of glyphosate for the maximum period of 15 years.

The European Parliament has called for a highly restricted seven year renewal, and has said the EC had exceeded its statutory powers. But, according to Rossman: “There are no democratic mechanisms in place to stop the Commission from cutting a deal with the corporate agrochemical giants which would keep Europe locked into the deadly spiral of increasing pesticide applications for another decade.”

He concluded: “The rush to glyphosate renewal is part and parcel of the EU’s general retreat from regulation… Nothing is more political than food, which involves, or should involve, choices about what we produce and how we produce it, bearing in mind that foodworkers are in the frontline of exposure to the hazards which consumers experience as residues.”

New research has identified a wide range of occupations associated with a risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a group of related cancers affecting the body’s immune system.

The large-scale study, conducted by more than 30 researchers from 13 countries, included an analysis of 10 international non-Hodgkin lymphoma studies consisting of about 10,000 cases and 12,000 controls.

The paper, published in the April 2016 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives,  concluded: “This pooled analysis supports a role for textile-, hairdressing-, and farming-related exposures in the development of NHL. Additional occupations associated with NHL or NHL subtypes include cleaners, painters, printers, and wood workers. The results by sex indicate that occupational exposures may play a role in NHL for both women and men, but the specific occupations involved differ between the sexes.”

It continued: “The large numbers of participants and the application of standard NHL and occupational classification systems allowed us to make estimates of relative risk by NHL subtype, forming an important step towards improving our understanding of NHL etiology. The findings of the present study can be further refined at the next stage, after specific exposures are identified in detailed exposure studies.”

Two kinds of NHL were especially associated with employment as women’s hairdressers and two types of NHL were especially associated with work in the textile industry.

The authors postulate that exposure to solvents in many of the jobs identified may play a role in the development of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

• Andrea ‘t Mannetje and others. Occupation and risk of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and Its subtypes: A pooled analysis from the InterLymph Consortium, Environmental Health Perspectives, April 2016.

A campaign by environmental group Greenpeace “for a toxic-free future where hazardous chemicals are no longer produced, used and dumped into our environment” was behind its decision to create a large and growing ‘chemical detox’ database. “This includes chemicals which are persistent, toxic, bioaccumulative, carcinogenic and disruptive to human hormones,” it says.

The two year project has resulted in a database already including entries on over 17,000 substances. Initially intended as an internal resource, Greenpeace has now made the database freely available online. “After completing it, we shared it with others who are trying to detox the planet, with companies, government and citizens who are dealing with toxic pollution in one way or another,” Greenpeace notes.

“This research doesn’t claim to hold the whole truth and offer all solutions. It is simply a contribution on the road towards a toxic-free future. It is open.”

• Greenpeace Detox Campaign Chemical Investigation database and executive summary.

France’s health and safety agency has decided to ban weedkillers that combine the chemicals glyphosate and tallowamine because of concerns over possible health risks.

Agweek reports the ANSES agency has sent a letter to manufacturers informing them that it intends to withdraw the authorisation for such products, said Francoise Weber, the watchdog’s deputy director-general. “It is not possible to guarantee that compositions containing glyphosate and tallowamine do not entail negative effects on human health,” Weber said.

Glyphosate, a common ingredient in weedkillers such as Monsanto’s Roundup, has been the subject of fierce debate in the past year since a World Health Organisation body classified it as probably carcinogenic to humans, and European Union countries are discussing whether or not to extend its EU-wide licence. France’s environment minister has been pushing for an EU-wide ban on glyphosate-based products.

Earlier in April, global food and farming union IUF and pesticides safety campaign PAN International called for a deluge of messages to be sent to the European Commission and its relevant bodies “urging them to ban glyphosate in the EU and to provide comprehensive support for a safer, saner food system which does not put agricultural workers in the front lines of exposure and inject massive quantities of toxic chemicals into the environment”.

• ANSES’ 9 February 2016 opinion on glyphosate.
• Sign the IUF/PAN letter to Vytenis Andriukaitis, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety; Donald Tusk, President of the European Council; and Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament.

Campaigners have said the European Commission must be stopped from proceeding with the renewed authorisation in the European Union of the toxic herbicide glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and the world’s most widely-used herbicide.

The demand from the global food and farming union IUF and Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International, comes as renewed authorisation is being pushed through despite an International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) warning last year that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans and other evidence of the impact of glyphosate on food and health.

IUF and PAN International are calling for a deluge of messages to be sent to the European Commission and its relevant bodies “urging them to ban glyphosate in the EU and to provide comprehensive support for a safer, saner food system which does not put agricultural workers in the front lines of exposure and inject massive quantities of toxic chemicals into the environment.”

• Sign the IUF/PAN letter to Vytenis Andriukaitis, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety; Donald Tusk, President of the European Council; and Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament.

The US government has gone where the UK had refused to go, introducing new rules to sharply reduce workplace exposures to silica. The 24 March 2016 move by the US Labor Department means the US will halve the occupational exposure standard from the level it currently shares with the UK, 0.1mg/m³, to 0.05mg/m³.

The potentially deadly mineral is encountered in a wide range of jobs from construction, to mining, ceramics, stone masonry, quarrying, brickmaking and fracking. The change will be phased in from June this year, with construction given one year’s grace to meet the requirements and other industries longer.

US officials estimate that the new silica standard, when fully in effect, will save hundreds of lives a year. Exposure to silica is linked to lung cancer, the often fatal lung-scarring condition silicosis and other respiratory, kidney and auto-immune diseases.

US labor secretary Thomas E Perez said he thought that many companies would easily adapt to the new standard because inexpensive equipment is available to control and trap the release of silica dust. US regulators have also argued that a tighter standard will drive improvements in monitoring and control technologies.

“This is no different than the story of asbestos,” the labor secretary said, commenting on decades of delays in introducing the standard. “After 40 years, the political will has finally caught up with the science.”

David Michaels, head of the US government safety regulator OSHA, said: “Every year, many exposed workers not only lose their ability to work, but also to breathe. Today, we are taking action to bring worker protections into the 21st century in ways that are feasible and economical for employers to implement.”

The new standard was welcomed by unions including the national union federation AFL-CIO, the National Coalition on Occupational Safety and Health, the American Public Health Association, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and Public Citizen.

AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka said: “We applaud the Obama administration for issuing these lifesaving measures,” adding: “The labor movement has fought for these standards for decades. We will continue to fight to defend these rules from the certain industry attacks that will come, so that workers are finally protected from this deadly dust.”

Unions and workplace health campaigners in the UK have pressed the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to match the US standard, which was finalised pending official ratification in August 2013.

HSE has argued the lower level now being introduced in the US is neither achievable nor practically measurable, issues raised in extensive US government hearings on the draft standard and dismissed comprehensively over two years ago.

• US final silica rule website. Finalised rule on the Federal Register.

A new £5 million centre in the UK is to spearhead research on the deadly asbestos cancer mesothelioma. The initiative was included in Chancellor George Osborne’s March 2016 budget.

The full budget document notes that banking fines would be used to provide funds “to support military charities and other good causes”, including: “National Mesothelioma Centre £5 million – to establish a centre of research in the fight against mesothelioma, which is directly affecting Service Veterans.”

Chris Knighton, 69, who has dedicated her life to campaigning to help those affected by the deadly condition since her husband Mick died from the asbestos-related cancer in 2001, welcomed the move.

Chris, who set up the Mick Knighton Mesothelioma Research Fund, said: “I’m delighted the government has allocated £5m to establish a Mesothelioma Centre for Research. Mesothelioma has been underfunded for decades and its fantastic the government has now recognised it’s one of the most challenging of cancers; as it’s only through high calibre research can we ever improve diagnosis, treatment and care for those affected by this devastating disease.”

Dave Anderson, the Labour MP for Blaydon, said: “This is welcome although I am only giving it two cheers because the funding is one-off and should be annual so that mesothelioma research is put on a par with other comparable cancers. But from acorns come oaks and pressure will continue to do the right thing.”

Initial reports say the national centre is set to be based at Imperial College, London, although asbestos victims’ groups and mesothelioma researchers have called for a more extensive discussion of how the funds are allocated.

Few realise it, but Europe faces over 100,000 occupational cancer deaths a year, the equivalent of a passenger jet crash every day. According to researcher Laurent Vogel: “We can sum up in four words why 100,000 work-related cancer deaths are not a political priority; inequality, visibility, power and freedom.”

Vogel, a top health and safety expert at the European Trade Union Confederation’s research arm, ETUI, said air crashes tend to claim the lives of the likes of shareholders, senior managers and politicians, because “the privileged classes fly much more than the rest of the population… For the 100,000 deaths from occupational cancer, the opposite is true.”

Occupational cancers don’t make headlines, he says, because doctors are quick to ask about a patient’s lifestyle but rarely ask about risk factors at work. Vogel adds “combating occupational cancer requires measures that come into conflict with corporate profits. It is sometimes suggested that the war on cancer could be won by discovering new treatments or perfecting means of early detection. This naive and technocratic vision masks the struggle over public and social control of production choices.”

He says while airline companies have a vested interest in assuring passengers their planes are safe, “by contrast, the organisation of work and the choice of processes and substances are imposed on workers by the company’s management.”

Vogel notes: “There are plenty of reasons to be outraged. But if we want to convert this outrage into action, objectives need to be set.”

He outlines three complementary routes to stopping occupational cancer: Strong legislation; strong inspection; and strong trade union action. He concludes that whether or not the European Commission backs tighter rules on workplace cancer risks “will depend on our capacity to convert cancer into a political priority. With over 100,000 deaths a year, there is an urgent need to mobilise.”

• Laurent Vogel’s editorial will appear in the forthcoming issue of ETUI’s health and safety magazine, Hesamag.

A move to approve the continued use of the toxic herbicide glyphosate in Europe has become the topic of a high profile tussle involving member states, citizens groups, environmental campaigners and unions.

On 8 March, the European Union’s Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed postponed a decision on renewal of the herbicide’s approval when Italy joined France, the Netherlands and Sweden in opposing the move. The case against glyphosate, linked to cancer and other health effects, got a further boost on 22 March, when the European Parliament’s Committee on Environment, Food Safety and Public Health (ENVI) formally objected to the herbicide’s re-authorisation by the European Commission. The postposed vote of the EU standing committee will now take place in May.

Global food and farming union federation IUF is calling for ban on glyphosate. It said “additional pressure is needed to ensure that the European Commission does not cut a deal with the corporate agrochemical giants which would keep Europe locked into the deadly spiral of increasing pesticide applications for another fifteen years.”

In March 2015, the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” It cited evidence in Canada, Sweden and the USA linking workers’ occupational exposure to glyphosate to increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other health effects.

IUF said the alternative to glyphosate isn’t other toxic pesticides like paraquat. It wants resources “made available to promote transition to non-chemical food production which sustains and enriches, rather than destroys, the food system on which we all depend.”