Industry and breast cancer

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].

 

HSE prejudices prejudice cancer prevention

Hazards accused the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) of making “unprovable assumptions” about improved occupational hygiene standards and risks, and about the willingness and capability of firms to recognise and control risks. HSE’s own studies have shown many chemical companies had, at least until the mid- to late-1990s, little or no knowledge of their duties under the chemical control regulations and most were unaware of relevant occupational exposure limits. An August 1997 HSE contract research report found that a quarter of “heavy users” of chemicals and a third of “users” did not have a “reasonable unprompted response when asked what they understood to be the principles of COSHH [the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health regulations].” Over a third of heavy users (35 per cent) and users (38 per cent) were “not aware” of occupational exposure limits, the official standards for the amount of chemicals in the air breathed in by workers. Only a small minority followed the preferred COSHH solution of eliminating exposures or substituting hazardous chemicals. The HSE report found that firms relied heavily on information from suppliers in deciding measures to control exposures. In a critique of the report, Hazards pointed to the example of medium density fibreboard, which contains the human cancer causes wood dust and suspected (now proven) formaldehyde. The regulator has claimed in an October 1997 statement that the softwood dust in MDF was not carcinogenic, at odds with the IARC classification. It described formaldehyde as “an irritant”, when it causes both asthma and was at the time classified by IARC as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” IARC’s next review upgraded this rating for formaldehyde to known human carcinogen.

Industry’s perception and use of occupational exposure limits. HSE Contract research report, CRR 144, HSE, August 1997. Chemicals calamity, Hazards, number 60, Ocdtober-December 1997.

Workplace roulette

‘Workplace Roulette: Gambling with cancer’ caused a massive political and media stir in Canada. The authors, based at the Occupational Health Centre for Ontario Workers (OHCOW), highlighted the reasons increasing numbers of working people find them exposed to substances, processes and environments that lead to cancer. It also provided practical guidance on prevention, including participatory research.

Matthew Firth, James Brophy and Margaret Keith. Workplace Roulette: Gambling With Cancer, Between the Lines, Revised and expanded edition, October 1997 (originally published January 1996).

Prevention means fewer exposures and less exposure to them

Authors affirm that estimating attributable risks from carcinogens is based on “unverified assumptions” in which evidence, some strong and some weak, is treated equally. Effective primary cancer prevention should reduce carcinogen numbers or exposures. Experimental evidence with mechanisms of action and suggestive epidemiology linking cancers and exposures is likely to produce a larger and better list of human carcinogens and target organs.  The paper notes: “Effective primary prevention resulting in a reduction of cancer risk can be obtained by: (i) a reduction in the number of carcinogens to which humans are exposed; or (ii) a reduction of the exposure levels to carcinogens. Exposure levels that could be seen as sufficiently low when based on single agents, may actually not be safe in the context of the many other concomitant carcinogenic and mutagenic exposures.”

L Tomatis, J Huff, I Hertz-Picciotto and others. Avoided and avoidable risks of cancer, Carcinogenesis, number 18, number 1, pages 97–105, 1997.

Industry causes cancer in our kids

Children living too close to industrial plants in Great Britain can face an increased risk of developing cancer, a large scale study found. The study, which examined data for 22,458 children who died of leukaemia and ‘solid’ cancers, found the cancer risk is greatest within a few hundred yards of pollutions sources and tapers with distance. Excesses were found in children whose addresses were close to workplaces including oil facilities and major uses of petroleum products, users of kilns and furnaces and airfields, railways, highways and harbours.

EG Knox and EA Gilman. Hazard proximities of childhood cancers in Great Britain from 1953-80, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, volume 51, pages 151-159, 1997.

Drycleaning cancer risk identified

A 1997 US study found increased levels of three cancers in drycleaning and laundry workers. Causes of death in a group of workers from these industries across 28 US states was compared to those for all industries. Among drycleaning and laundry workers, there was an increased risk of deaths from cancer of the oesophagus and larynx. Among female workers aged 65 years or more there was also increased deaths from cancer of the genital organs. The survey raised concerns about exposure to the common drycleaning solvent perc (perchloroethylene or tetrachloroethylene). In 2014, IARC rated perc as “probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A).”

JT Walker and others. Cancer mortality among laundry and drycleaning worker, American Journal of Industrial Medicine, volume 32, pages 614-619, 1997. Also see: IARC monograph 106, 2014.

UK regulator backs an asbestos ban for the first time

UK regulator backs an asbestos ban for the first time
A February 1997 statement from the UK Health and Safety Commission backed calls for a ban on asbestos. In what was described by Hazards magazine as “a shock departure from previous policy”, the statement recommended to the environment secretary “that the government continue to work in the European Union to extend the EU’s existing ban on asbestos to cover all uses of chrysotile (‘white’) asbestos – except for a limited number of essential uses where there are no satisfactory alternatives.” HSC said a consultation document would be issued, ahead of a ban coming into force in 1999. A ban in the UK took effect in November 1999.

HSC backs asbestos ban! Hazards, number 57, January-March 1997 [not online].

Dye, dye, die

The instructions provided by chemical suppliers can be of little or no use to chemical users, even those using cancer-causing substances, a study has found. The project by European Union health and safety enforcement agencies on dyestuff safety found nearly 40 per cent of new dyestuffs were on the market illegally “putting workers and the environment at risk from exposure to them,” a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) news release said. HSE added: “Of particular concern was that half of the suppliers or merchants dealing in hazardous dyes (eg carcinogenic), had inadequately labelled sustances, thus increasing the potential risk to users… 150 substances, out of the 4,000 dyestuffs checked, were found to be hazardous (eg. sensitising or carcinogenic), and around 50 per cent of these were imported without a proper label indicating the hazardous properties.”

Europe-wide check finds 40 per cent of new dyestuffs illegally marketed, according to report on enforcement project. HSE news release E191:96, 6 November 1996. See Hazards report.

Doll plays down cancer prevention after playing down risks

Sir Richard Doll, lead author of the much-cited and officially embraced 1981 Doll/Peto report, played down the occupational and environmental contribution to cancer throughout the latter decades of his career, including actively opposing further control measures. In a 1996 paper in the journal Carcinogenesis he wrote: “Two categories of cause remain for which I see little possibility of material benefit from their further control, namely the hazards of occupation and pollution.”

Richard Doll. Commentary: Nature and nurture: possibilities for cancer control, Carcinogenesis, volume 17, number 2, pages 177-184, 1996.

A century of knowing benzene harmed the blood

In an editorial in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Philip Landrigan notes that 1997 was the 100th anniversary of the first reports of benzene causing blood disorders. It has subsequently been linked to other blood diseases, including leukaemia. Landrigan comments: “The tragedy of benzene is that it has taken so long for science to be translated into protective action.”

Philip J Landrigan. Benzene and blood: One hundred years of evidence, American Journal of Industrial Medicine, volume 29, issue 3, pages 225–226, March 1996.

A continually-updated, annotated bibliography of occupational cancer research produced by Hazards magazine, the Alliance for Cancer Prevention and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).