Global asbestos plc blocked a deal that would have made it more difficult to unload asbestos on the developing world. It bought scientists and column inches in national papers. And it is killing hundreds of thousands each year. Hazards exposes the global asbestos industry’s desperate battle for survival – at any price.
Hazards 85, January-March 2004.
Unions in Canada are demanding that action is taken to tackle to escalating toll of work-related cancers. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) says its new national campaign will help workers learn about exposure to cancer-causing materials on the job and spells out how to build a campaign to make their workplace and their communities safer.
Preventing cancer: A campaign for workers; Prevent cancer: A campaign guide, CLC, 2005. Documents no longer accessible online.
A Department of Health expert committee has found ‘limited evidence’ of a link between occupational exposure to pesticides and prostate cancer and called for further investigations. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, with over 24,700 new cases a year and is the second largest cause of death from cancer in the UK. There were 9,900 deaths reported in 2002 accounting for around 13 per cent of cancer deaths in men.
Department of Health Committee on Carcinogenicity statement, January 2005. The Guardian, 10 January 2005. Risks 190.
Workers exposed to the pesticide chlorpyrifos may have an elevated risk of lung cancer, according to a report from US government researchers. Scientists at the National Cancer Institute found that among the more than 54,000 farmers and insecticide applicators they followed for six years, those with the highest chlorpyrifos exposure had twice the risk of developing lung cancer as those who did not work with the pesticide. A later paper from this study linked cancers to exposure to another pesticide, diazonon.
Won Jin Lee, Aaron Blair and others. Cancer incidence among pesticide applicators exposed to chlorpyrifos in the Agricultural Health Study, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, volume 96, pages 1781-1789, 2004 [abstract].
Exposure to levels of benzene below that allowable in UK workplaces may pose a health risk, suggests new research. The study has shown that workers who inhaled less than one part per million (1ppm) had fewer white blood cells than those who were not exposed. The UK exposure standard for benzene is currently 1ppm averaged over a working day, suggesting UK workers could be facing potentially health damaging exposures even if workplace safety limits are not exceeded. The research, by US and Chinese scientists, is published in the journal Science. The study prompted the industry-financed Benzene Taskforce Project in Shanghai which ran from 2000 to 2009. In 2014, the Center Public Integrity exposed this as an industry attempt, in the words of the industry body API, to “develop scientific data… for use in science advocacy, risk management, litigation support.” The API memo states that benzene is “of particular concern to the industry” because “tighter regulation… could impose substantial costs.”
Q lan, L Zhang G Li and others. Hematotoxicity in workers exposed to low levels of benzene, Science, volume 306, issue 5702, pages 1774-1776, 3 December 2004. Risks 186.
A global union campaign has seen building products giant James Hardie’s rapid descent from darling of the stockmarket to company in crisis, facing protests and legal action on three continents.
Asbestos is the world’s biggest ever industrial killer. Studies suggest asbestos disease could eventually account for 10 million deaths worldwide.
Joseph LaDou. The asbestos cancer epidemic. Environmental Health Perspectives, volume 112, number 3, pages 285-290, 2004.
Joint Declaration from the International Building Trade Union Federations, made at the Global Asbestos Congress, Tokyo, November 2004.
Full declaration, November 2004.
Solvents commonly used by hundreds of painters are being blamed for a young Christchurch worker’s shock death from leukaemia. Jason Gibson, 29, experienced irrational mood swings, headaches, chronic lethargy and nosebleeds in the months before being diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APML) last November. Six days later, he suffered a massive brain haemorrhage and died. Working as a painter was flagged as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 1989.
IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, volume 47, Some organic solvents, resin monomers and related compounds, pigments and occupational Exposures in paint manufacture and painting, 1989 [pdf]. Risks 179.
The TUC says there is now an unanswerable case in favour of workplace smoking bans. Commenting on a new international review of research into the health impact of smoking bans, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: ‘The research proves that in the towns and cities around the world where smoking has been stubbed out, the positive health effects on workers previously exposed to tobacco smoke are immediate and lasting.’