Industry has limitless creativity when it comes to shirking responsibility for its dangerous business, according to ‘Trust us, we’re experts’. The investigative book, sub-titled ‘How industry manipulates science and gambles with your future’, includes several examples of the industry PR ruses used to defend workplace toxins, including asbestos and other carcinogens. These include the creation of industry funded “astroturf” organisations and scientists funded to present the industry line as “impartial” facts.

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. Trust us, we’re experts, Tarcher/Putham, 2001.

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) researchers John Hodgson and Andrew Darnton published a report on the relatively risks of different forms of asbestos. They concluded the risks of chrysotile asbestos – the only form of asbestos used in the UK since the 1970s and which has accounted for the great majority of the asbestos ever used– were relatively low.  The paper said chrysotile (white asbestos) caused one case of mesothelioma for every 100 caused by amosite (brown asbestos) and 500 caused by crocidolite (blue asbestos).  In 2009, the same authors had to admit they had got their sums wrong – really wrong. Hodgson and Darnton said the ratio was really 1:10:50. Their original and wrong findings, however, were still being used in 2013 by the industry and the International Agency for Research on Cancer to support claims of the relative safety of chrysotile.

John T Hodgson and Andrew Darnton. The quantitative risks of mesothelioma and lung cancer in relation to asbestos exposure, The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, volume 44, issue 8, pages 565-601, 2000.

‘Stopping Breast Cancer Before is Starts – Putting Primary Prevention on the National Breast Cancer Agenda’ was a strategy launched by the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) at the House of Commons on 13 November 2000. The strategy built on WEN’s ‘Putting Breast Cancer on the Map’ project.

Stopping Breast Cancer Before is Starts – Putting Primary Prevention on the National Breast Cancer Agenda, Women’s Environmental Network, strategy launched at the House of Commons, 13 November 2000. Putting Breast Cancer on the Map.

Work-related cancers and other diseases were missed for years in workers employed by a Chesterfield plastics factory, a joint union and university study concluded in 2000. A total of 162 former employees of the Vinatex factory participated in a survey by Chesterfield Trade Union Safety Team (TRUST). Among other conditions, five cases of bladder cancer and five of skin cancer were identified, more than expected. The factory exposed workers to vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), the raw material for PVC and a known human carcinogen primarily linked to the liver angiosarcoma. The report of the survey, produced jointly with De Montfort University, concluded: “Only in January 2000 did the HSE search the HSE angiosarcoma register for cases involving Vinatex workers: this is a remarkable omission. The HSE could not then identify any angiosarcoma cases from the plant.” TRUST identified at least one angiosarcoma case missing from the HSE register.

Report on a health survey of ex-Vinatex workers, TRUST/Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, De Montfort University, June 2000. Reported in: How could you miss this?: A generation of cancers and ill-health, Hazards, number 72, October-December 2000. Also see 2009 Journal of Risk and Governance entry. The Vinatex study is featured in a 15 August 2000 TUC news release as an example of participatory research (see below).

In August 2000, the UK national union body TUC called on trade unions to be on the lookout for new workplace diseases .In a special TUC-backed ‘Surveying the damage’ report in the workers’ health journal Hazards, union safety reps were urged to ask their workmates what health problems they are experiencing, so that detailed research can identify previously hidden occupational diseases. As part of the plan, TUC training was to be provided for safety reps on techniques such as “body mapping”. TUC highlighted the findings of a worker-based study into the effects of the chemical vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) carried out with financial support from the TUC and a number of organisations in North Derbyshire. It said it “believes that many other diseases caused by work, including large numbers of cancers, could currently be being wrongly classified as ‘lifestyle’ diseases.”

TUC news release, 15 August, 2000. Surveying the damage: A guide to do-it-yourself health and safety research, Hazards, number 71, July-September 2000.

People whose jobs expose them to high levels of diesel fumes face an increased risk of lung cancer, a study by Swedish researchers found. Machinery and motor mechanics, miners and truck, bus, construction plant and forklift truck drivers were all identified as at risk. The authors said 2.7 per cent of all lung cancers could be attributed to diesel exhaust. They added: “The analysis of relative risk in relation to cumulative dose indicated an increased risk of lung cancer in the highest dose group, and a dose-response trend was present in terms of cumulative dose.” In 2013, a paper estimated the diesel exhaust component could be 5 per cent. In 2012, IARC gave diesel exhaust fumes a top group 1 ranking as a proven human carcinogen. This came after an industry campaign to try and block the move.

Per Gustavsson and others. Occupational Exposure and Lung Cancer Risk: A Population-based Case-Referent Study in Sweden, American Journal of Epidemiology, volume 152, number 1, pages 32-34, 2000.

More than one in five workers across Europe are exposed to causing substances at work, a study found. The European Union’s CAREX project assessed occupational carcinogen exposures from 1990 to 1993 by member state across the European Union. It found: “About 32 million workers (23 per cent of those employed) in the EU were exposed to agents covered by CAREX. At least 22 million workers were exposed to IARC group 1 carcinogens.” These are substances known to cause cancer in humans. The figures for Great Britain were broadly in line with the EU average. Above 5 million workers were estimated to be to be exposed to cancer causing substances, affecting 22 per cent of the workforce. Top exposures in Great Britain (based on workers exposed at least 75 per cent of the time) were tobacco smoke and solar radiation, followed by crystalline silica and radon, diesel engine exhaust, wood dust, benzene, ethylene dibromide, lead and inorganic lead compounds, glasswool and chromium VI compounds. Asbestos is excluded from the analysis. The paper noted: “According to the preliminary estimates, there were circa 5 million workers (22 per cent of the employed) exposed to the agents covered by CAREX in Great Britain in 1990-93. The number of exposures was circa 7 million”. Other recent studies have suggested the at-risk group may in fact be increasing. Even by the CAREX estimate, over a fifth of the UK workforce has been exposed to possible human carcinogens and for these workers most of the resultant cancers will only emerge in a couple of decades or more.

Timo Kauppinen and others. Occupational exposure to carcinogens in the European Union, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, volume 57, pages 10-18, January 2000.

A campaign by trades unions, hazards activists and the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat ended in success on 24 November 1999 with the introduction of a UK ban on the importation, sale or use of asbestos products. This made the UK the 10^th European Union country to implement a ban, ahead of a January 2005 EU-wide deadline. A World Trade Organisation to the European Union ban was dismissed.

Asbestos (Prohibitions) (Amendment) Regulations 1999, Statutory Instrument SI 1999 No.2373. International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS).

Workers are losing out because of a common test of whether a condition is occupational is based on bad calculations. Sander Greenland, writing in the American Journal of Public Health, said the doubling of relative risk (RRx2) requirement, commonly used to establish whether a cancer is occupational and to determine whether compensation is payable, was “a methodologic error that has become a social problem.” He explained: “The first problem is that the probability of causation cannot be computed solely from the relative risk. In particular, when exposure accelerates the time of disease occurrence, the standard epidemiological estimates of probability of causation will tend to underestimate that probability. The second problem is that the exposure dose at which the probability of causation exceeds 50 per cent (the point at which exposure causation is more likely than not) may fall well below the ‘doubling dose’ (the dose at which the incidence of disease is doubled).”

Greenland S (1999). Relation of probability of causation to relative risk and doubling dose: a methodologic error that has become a social problem. American Journal of Public Health, volume 89(8), pages 1166-9.

On 27 July 1999, the European Commission announced that all member states must introduce an asbestos ban by January 2005 at the latest. On 24 August 1999, the UK government announced a national ban would take effect on 24 November 1999. It was a major landmark in a 24 year push by Hazards magazine and campaigners. The magazine noted: “The challenge now is to stop the deadly asbestos trade with the developing world.” The industry was continuing a well-resourced global marketing campaign, underwritten in part by Canadian government money.

Last gasp for asbestos: A dying industry, Hazards, number 67, July-September 1999 [not online]. Hazards asbestos webpages.