A coalition of public health experts and campaigners is saying the long-running US ‘war on cancer’ is being lost because too little priority is given to prevention. A report from the Cancer Prevention Coalition (CPC) says Americans face increasing cancer risks from occupational and environmental exposure to industrial carcinogens, but established government and non-profit cancer organisations are fixated on treatment rather than prevention. ‘This report makes it clear that we are losing the war against cancer,’ said Dr Samuel Epstein, CPC chair and author of ‘The stop cancer before it starts campaign: How to win the losing war against cancer.’ He said the usual approach tended to ‘blame the victim’ for contracting cancer, rather than explore the environmental causation that could be responsible for their illness.

Risks 95. Cancer Prevention Coalition.

A racial inequality in occupational cancer risks has been reported in a number of studies, notes Linda Rae Murray. She concludes: “The exposure-related attributes involve discrimination in the workplace that may result in job ghettos and disproportionate exposure to certain hazards. Studies should be designed to address the questions of how class, race, and ethnicity differentially effect occupational health risks, and how class and race/ethnicity affect exposure- and susceptibility-related attributes. Such studies might help us unravel how socioeconomic factors, race, and ethnicity contribute to occupational health injury and disease.” The 2005 UMASS Lowell report (Clapp and others) also highlights racial inequalities in occupational cancer risks, noting: “Unequal workplace exposures among different populations provide further indications of the ability of occupational exposures to cause harm.” It adds that studies in the US steel industry found the highest rates of lung cancer – 10 times expected – were in non-white workers, employed in the highest risk jobs. Other examples, including chromate workers, are cited in the Murray paper.

Murray LR. Sick and tired of being sick and tired: Scientific evidence, methods, and research implications for racial and ethnic disparities in occupational health, American Journal of Public Health, volume 93, pages 221-226, 2003.

International union bodies have raised their concerns about industry bias in the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) deliberations on substances being evaluated for their cancer risks. The 10 October 2002 letter to Jerry M Rice, the head of IARC’s identification and evaluation unit, expresses concern at “reports of conflicts of interest, bias toward industry and of questionable evaluation practices by IARC.” The letter was signed by five global union federations, the European TUC’s health and safety unit and the national union federations from the UK (TUC), US (AFL-CIO) and Australia (ACTU). The letter noted: “As international and national union organisations representing tens of millions of workers worldwide, we call on you to address as a matter of urgency” issues raised by the US Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), “particularly its charge that meetings can be dominated by an industry perspective that ‘has not historically represented the interests of public health, worker safety, or environmental protection’.” The union letter concludes: “We feel at this time, it is particularly important IARC distances itself – and is seen to distance itself – from any suggestion of improper corporate influence.”

Reported in Cancer in the system: Corporate disease infects the international cancer agency, Hazards, number 80, page 16, October-December 2002.

Dr James Huff, who headed the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) chemical evaluation programme until 1980, has warned that the agency had lost its position as “the most authoritative and scientific source” on cancer risks “due to the increasing influence of those aligned with the industry point of view regarding chemicals and their inert hazards to public and occupational health.” He found representatives with industry sympathies or affiliations routinely outnumbered those aligned with public health at IARC evaluation meeting. In the decade from 1993, ratings for eight chemicals were upgraded, but 12 were downgraded. In the preceding decade, before industry asserted its influence on the decision making process, no IARC assessments were downgraded. It can take a concerted campaign to get action to prevent cancer risks, even when the evidence of harm is overwhelming. Huff noted in meetings discussing IARC monographs volumes 62 to 80, “in all but one of the Monographs meetings those aligned with industry ‘out-numbered’ those aligned with public health.” Huff was also a signatory to a parallel February 2002 letter to Gro Harlem Bruntland, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO) complaining about IARC’s perceived collusion with industry. IARC comes under the aegis of WHO.

Huff J. IARC monographs, industry influence, and upgrading, downgrading, and under-grading chemicals: A personal viewpoint. International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, volume 8, number 3, pages 249-270, July/September 2002. Also see: Cancer in the system: Corporate disease infects the international cancer agency, Hazards, number 80, October-December 2002.

Letter to Dr Gro Harlem Bruntland, director-general, WHO, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, volume 8, number 3, pages 279–280, 1 July 2002.

A solvent the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had been promoting as an environmentally friendly alternative is ‘carcinogenic’ the safety regulator said in March 2002. HSE said the exposure standard for the common workplace solvent would be tightened from 2002 because the European Union had revised its cancer rating to ‘category 2’, which applies to “substances that should be regarded as carcinogenic to humans.” Use of solvent – also known as trike or trichloroethene – increased after alternative, safer solvents were phased out as part of efforts to protect the ozone layer. HSE actively touted trichloroethylene as an environmentally friendly substitute. This came years after union campaigns to remove the highly hazardous solvent. Unions can campaigners had argued that alternative, solvent-free methods were available for many tasks.

Engineering solvent reclassified as a carcinogen HSE tells managers, HSE news release, 18 March 2002. Risks 46, 23 March 2002.

The UN’s cancer agency has been questioned about its “bias towards industry” and “questionable evaluation practices.” In a follow up letter to a 1 March 2002 meeting with the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) Jerry M Rice in Washington DC, Jennifer Sass of the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) wrote she was “hopeful that our discussions will lead IARC towards compliance with the WHO/IARC Declaration of Interests (DOI) policy. Clearly, IARC’s current practice of collecting the DOI forms, but allowing all financially conflicted persons to remain as voting, fully participating members of the Working Group (WG) cannot be considered compliance. Further, to allow scientists who have a financial interest in the decision outcome to prepare the discussion documents, or, worse, to chair the discussion groups pertaining to the chemical is simply unacceptable.” The letter concludes “it is of great importance that IARC complies with the WHO/IARC disclosure of interest policy, and that public interest organizations such as NRDC and governmental agencies world-wide be able to have confidence that the Monographs represent the truly objective state-of-the-science, untainted by the influence of financially interested parties.”

Reform Needed at the International Agency for Research on Cancer: Letter to Jerry M Rice, chief of the identification and evaluation unit, IARC, from Jennifer Sass, NRDC, 13 March 2002. Also see: Cancer in the system: Corporate disease infects the international cancer agency, Hazards, number 80, October-December 2002.

Academics sticking their heads above the parapet and raising health concerns about work hazards have always risked a career wrecking run-in with the mighty US business lobby. But in a new twist, it is not just the whistleblowers that should be fearful. The Chronicle of Higher Education has revealed a case where chemical companies are also going after the peer reviewers of critical academic publications. Lawyers representing more than 20 chemical companies, including many household names, have taken the unusual step of issuing subpoenas to five peer reviewers of a scholarly book as part of litigation over the alleged health risks of vinyl chloride, a widely used cancer-causing industrial chemical. At issue in the subpoenas to the publishers and reviewers is the book Deceit and denial: The deadly politics of industrial pollution, which was published in 2002 by the University of California Press and the Milbank Memorial Fund, a foundation dedicated to research on health policy.

Deceit and denial website. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and denial, the deadly politics of industrial pollution, University of California Press, 2002. ISBN13: 9780520240636 (also see updated 2013 epilogue).

The non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) wrote to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in February 2002 “to express our concern regarding the current meeting of the IARC Monographs Working Group on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, Vol. 82: Some traditional herbal medicines, some mycotoxins, naphthalene and styrene, in Lyon on February 12-19, 2002.” The letter from NRDC’s Jennifer Sass and Linda Greer added: “Our concerns stem from the evident conflict of interest surrounding the toxicologists who will provide opinion on styrene. The three toxicologists, James A. Bond, Gary P. Carlson, and George Cruzan each have financial relationships with groups representing the interests of the styrene manufacturers.” The letter concluded: “NRDC requests that IARC, in the interests of preserving the credibility and scientific integrity of the premiere international body of cancer assessment, remove from its Working Group any members with a financial conflict of interest. We appeal to the IARC as scientists, as persons of integrity, and as protectors of public health.”

Reform Needed at the International Agency for Research on Cancer: Letter to Paul Kleihues, Director, IARC, from Jennifer Sass and Linda Greer, NRDC, 12 February 2002.

The UK national union federation TUC and the grassroots Hazards Campaign teamed up in 2002 to launch an ‘Asbestos: No hiding place’ campaign. This included a joint guide for workplace safety reps, published in Hazards magazine, in anticipation of new asbestos regulations due out later in the 2002 that would impose new duties on employers and building owners to safely manage asbestos in an estimated 2 million building. TUC said its research showed the death toll from the “modern plague” of asbestos disease had been growing for a decade and was killing significantly more people each year than deaths on the roads.

Asbestos: No hiding place, TUC/Hazards Campaign, 2002. Also see: Hazards, number 77, January-March 2002.

A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation study found elevated rates of four cancers among workers and former employees at National Semiconductor’s plant in Scotland’s Silicon Glen. HSE undertook the study after pressure from a group of women workers who linked their cancers to the Greenock factory. A year previously, it had been revealed that the company had spied on the group, known as Phase 2, and had used company ringers and a dirty tricks campaign in an attempt to discredit them. The controversy continued for many years. After a follow up study in 2010, the HSE published this note on is website: “A study of cancer among the current and former employees of NSUK was published in 2010. This updated a previous study published in 2001 and did not support earlier concerns about a link between working at NSUK and developing cancer.” This statement was criticised publicly by unions as “bogus”. The STUC said the updated report infact “clearly states that incidences for some types of cancer were higher than they had anticipated.”

Cancer among current a former workers at National Semiconductor (UK) Ltd, Greenock: results of an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive, HSE, December 2001.