The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) has launched a new Chemicals Health Monitor website – an online source of information about chemicals and related diseases. HEAL says the new resource “provides a comprehensive compilation of recent information and evidence” about the links between chemical contaminants and ill-health.
All posts by Jawad
Toxics trade convention in jeopardy
A treaty intended to ensure the worst industrial poisons aren’t traded globally without health and safety warnings is in jeopardy because of lobbying by vested interests. A global alliance of environmental, labour movement and health groups is sounding the alarm, saying “industry interference and political sabotage by a handful of countries, led by Canada, is strangling the Rotterdam Convention”. Canada has repeatedly vetoed listing of chyrsotile asbestos.
Rotterdam Treaty campaign statement. RightOnCanada asbestos webpage. Risks 347.
Work cancer’s deadly history in the US
For much of its history, the USA’s cancer war has been fighting the wrong battles, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies. ‘The secret history of the war on cancer’, a heavyweight publication by US academic Devra Davis and described in a Lancet review as “a rattling good read”, says while campaigns have targeted the disease, they’ve singularly failed to address the causes.
Devra Davis. The secret history of the war on cancer. ISBN 978 0 465 01566 5 2, Basic Books, 2008.
Cancer report concludes there is an obligation to act
The authors review epidemiological evidence up to 2007, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer had identified 415 known or suspect carcinogens. The report stresses the need for a new approach recognizing multiple interacting causes of occupational cancer. The paper challenges the attributable fraction approach of Doll and Peto as well as Rushton, who was the author of the UK Health and Safety Executive’s estimates of occupational cancer toll estimates. “We argue for a new cancer prevention paradigm, one based on an understanding that cancer is ultimately caused by multiple interacting factors rather than a paradigm based on dubious attributable fractions. This new cancer prevention paradigm demands that we limit exposure to avoidable environmental and occupational carcinogens, in combination with additional important risk factors like diet and lifestyle,” the report notes, adding: “The current state of knowledge is sufficient to compel us to act on what we know. We repeat the call of ecologist Sandra Steingraber: ‘From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act’.”
RW Clapp, M Jacobs, and E Loechle. Environmental and occupational causes of cancer: New evidence, 2005-2007, Reviews of Environmental Health, volume 23.1, pages 1-37, January-March 2008.
Work cancer protection inadequate
A report produced by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA), calls for tighter controls on chemicals including workplace carcinogens. The report found 109 chemicals recognised in California as cancer-causing are not regulated as occupational carcinogens, with 44 of these not even having a permissible exposure limit for the workplace.
Occupational Health Hazard Risk Assessment Project for California. Complete OEHHA technical report. Risks 339.
Euro MPs call for work disease action
Euro MPs have called for measures to protect workers from a new generation of health threats at work. The all-party European Parliament employment committee wants a Europe-wide drive against cancer-causing exposures in the workplace as well as measures to combat musculoskeletal disorders such as back pain and repetitive strain injuries.
Australian action call on shiftwork cancer risk
One of Australia’s biggest unions has called for a review of working hours after an International Agency for Research on Cancer study found people who work night shifts have a higher risk of contracting cancer. AWU national health and safety officer, Yossi Berger, said the “frightening report” had confirmed the union’s worst fears, and added: “You can earn a lot more money working these shifts but you may find yourself using the money on a designer oxygen tent.”
More evidence on wood dust cancers
Wood dust exposure at work greatly increases the risk of a range of cancers, a study has found. A study has linked occupational exposure to wood dust to “other upper aero digestive tract and respiratory (UADR) cancers”, with the researchers finding “regular wood dust exposure was associated with a statistically significant increased risk of 32 per cent for all UADR cancers”.
Vijay Jayaprakash and others. Wood dust exposure and the risk of Upper Aero-Digestive and Respiratory Cancers in males, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Published Online First: 8 January 2008. doi:10.1136/oem.2007.036210 [abstract].
How the law is used to influence the science on workplace health
Companies attempting to evade costly occupational disease lawsuits can make effective use of the courts to influence the scientific literature, a detailed review has illustrated. The paper in the Journal of Law and Policy “attempts to examine the impact of litigation on the scientific literature. Using as an example the issues of asbestos disease among automobile mechanics, we examine how the contours and content of the scientific literature are directly and intentionally shaped by parties seeking to succeed in litigation… We posit that if not for the litigation, or fear of future litigation, the body of scientific literature about a particular topic would be quite different. Certain components of the literature would not have been created, others would have been modified or delayed.” The authors conclude: “Litigants have not only added to the literature papers
supportive of their position in court, they have attempted to subtract from the literature, pressuring government agencies to withdraw or modify documents they prefer not to have available to their opponents. As a result, litigation may have a direct and undesirable effect on the injury and disease prevention activities of government agencies.”
David Michaels and Celeste Monforton. How litigation shapes the scientific literature, Journal of Law and Policy, volume 15, issue 3, pages 1137-1169, 2007
Work lung cancer risks are not declining
If you thought workplace exposure to the dust, fumes and chemicals that cause lung cancer was a think of the past you’d be wrong. An international study “suggests that exposure to occupational lung carcinogens is still a problem, with such exposures producing moderate to large increases in risk.”
F Veglia, P Vineis, K Overvad and others. Occupational exposures, environmental tobacco smoke, and lung cancer, Epidemiology, volume 18, number 6, pages 769-775, 2007 [abstract].