Global trade union confederation ITUC has joined the chorus of condemnation of the decision last month to exclude chrysotile asbestos and the pesticide endosulfan from the list of dangerous products under the Rotterdam Convention, the international agreement which regulates exports of hazardous chemicals.
ITUC news release, 12 November 2008. Risks 382.
Governments doing the dirty work of toxic exporters have succeeding in blocking listing of chrysotile asbestos and the pesticide endosulfan on a global safety warning system. A handful of governments ignored dire health problems linked to the two candidate substances, and vetoed their including on the “Prior Informed Consent” list, which would require importing nations to be given notice of the dangers posed by the product.
Urgent government action is needed to avert the “major public health disaster” caused by occupational cancers, Stirling University researchers have warned. Writing in the European Journal of Oncology, Professor Andrew Watterson reports that more people die in Scotland from occupational cancers than from road accidents, murders and suicides combined.
University of Stirling news release, 7 November 2008. Andrew Watterson and others. Occupational cancer prevention in Scotland: a missing public health priority. European Journal of Oncology, volume 13, number 3, pages 161-170, 2008.
The latest newsletter of the European trade union health and safety think tank, HESA, includes a ‘Special report: Work-related cancers – Seeing through the smokescreen.’ The report includes details of French grassroots action against occupational cancers, asbestos litigation, using Google Earth to improve workplace conditions, cancers in Scotland’s Silicon Glen and an innovative Italian approach to addressing cancer risks.
HESA newsletter, No.34, 2008. ETUI health and safety unit occupational cancer webpages. Risks 380,.
A government-commissioned report from the French research agency Inserm makes wide-ranging recommendations, many relating to prevention of workplace and related risks. It notes: “The impact of an environmental factor on the cancer risk depends both on its link with this cancer and the prevalence of exposure to this factor in the population. An environmental factor conferring an even low or moderate increase in the risk of cancer will therefore have a high impact if it is very widespread in the general population. On the contrary, a potent carcinogenic factor will only have a low impact if
very few people are exposed to it. In many cases this evaluation of the impact of environmental factors is still restricted by the lack of data making it possible to quantify exposure throughout the lifetime of exposed populations and to specify co-exposures. Progress must be made in evaluating the effects of chronic exposure at low doses. This is a major public health issue as it concerns a large proportion of the population.”
Cancer and the Environment – A collective expert report, Inserm, 2 October 2008.
It happens almost every time. When a study is published linking a workplace chemical to serious disease, a scientist working for the industry disputes the findings. David Michaels, author of ‘Doubt is their product’, exposes industry’s dangerous tactics to protect its toxic favourites. Case histories in a Hazards magazine feature include benzene, beryllium and manganese. He points to workplaces where bladder cancer wiped out the whole workforce. Michaels notes: “The mission of health and safety activists, as well as public health and environmental agencies, is to reduce hazards before people get sick or the environment is irreparably damaged. We don’t need certainty to act. It is time to return to first principles: use the best science available, but do not demand certainty where it does not exist.”
Hazards 103, July-September 2008.
A coalition of environmental, consumer and union safety organisations has published a ‘Substitute It Now!’ list of ‘high concern’ chemicals. The aim of the ‘SIN List’ is to speed up implementation of REACH, the new EU chemicals law, by encouraging companies to make sound substitution decisions. The SIN List 1.0 includes nearly 300 chemicals such as formaldehyde, benzene, asbestos and dozens of other industrial carcinogens, reproductive hazards and highly dangerous toxins. On 18 September 2008, the SIN List 1.0 was presented to more than 70 multinational companies at a high-profile conference in Brussels.
Substitution 1.0 – the art of delivering toxic-free products, ChemSec, 2008. Risks 375.
The US authorities are doing little to protect workers from occupational cancer and as a result are “bystanders to industrial manslaughter”, top experts have warned. Jeanne Mager Stellman, professor and chair of environmental and occupational health sciences at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, said government policy and a “lack of the will to prevent occupational disease, death and disability” are responsible for the failure to control cancer-causing chemicals in the workplace. She said: “It is not a coincidence that the decrease in carcinogen-control regulations, studies and government publications corresponds to the rapid shrinkage of the United States’ industrial workforce and their representation by trade unions.” She concluded: “We hope that the resurgence of interest in this topic may be a harbinger to a new future in which we will not continue to remain bystanders to ongoing industrial manslaughter.”
SUNY Downstate Medical Center news release. Industrial carcinogens: A need for action [pdf]. Risks 374.
‘Defending the indefensible: The global asbestos industry and its fight for survival’ gives a seminal account of the asbestos industry, and its attempts to defend the product, by two expert historians of the subject. It examines how the asbestos industry and its allies in government, insurance, and medicine defended the product throughout the twentieth century. It explains how mining and manufacture could continue despite overwhelming medical evidence as to the risks. The argument advanced in this book is that asbestos has proved so enduring because the industry was able to mount a successful defence strategy for the mineral – a strategy that still operates in some parts of the world. This defence involved the shaping of the public debate by censoring, and sometimes corrupting, scientific research, nurturing scientific uncertainty, and using allies in government, insurance, and medicine.
Jock McCulloch and Geoffrey Tweedale. Defending the indefensible: The global asbestos industry and its fight for survival, OUP, 15 September 2008. ISBN: 9780199534852.
A Finnish union is calling for the use of creosote-impregnated wooden electricity poles to be stopped on health grounds. The Electrical Workers’ Union says safer alternatives should be used instead of the cancer-linked version.
Trade Union News from Finland, 5 August 2008. Risks 368.