This study led to a great increase in interest in the link between shiftwork and cancer. Co-author Johnni Hansen’s influential studies linking breast cancer and long years of night shift work led to compensation for workers in Denmark. This later research strengthened the link, especially for women working in the health sector where some of the most disruptive shifts have been worked. Another 2012 Hansen study linked night work to an increased breast cancer risk in women in the Danish military.
Unions called in 2012 for an ambitious European agenda on workplace health and safety, including EU-wide action to tackle work-related cancers. They warn that the economic crisis should not be used as an excuse to backtrack on safety standards. The much delayed 2013-2020 strategy, finally released in 2014, did not include action on workplace carcinogens.
Unions in Europe are to become ‘REACH ambassadors’ in companies using chemicals. ETUC and IndustriAll Europe, part of the global union federation covering workers in the chemical sector, say they “are calling on their member organisations to alert employers about their responsibilities through a new campaign in collaboration with the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA).”
A study has reinforced concerns that women undertaking night work can face an increased risk of breast cancer. Reporting their findings online in the International Journal of Cancer, the French study concludes the risk of developing breast cancer was 30 per cent higher in women who had worked nights compared to women who had never worked nights.
The waste industry must adopt “much lower exposure limits” for dust at work or workers will be left at risk of potentially life-threatening occupational diseases, a study has concluded.
A Swiss billionaire and a Belgian baron have been sentenced to 16 years in prison after being found guilty of corporate manslaughter. After a stunningly successful grassroots campaign for justice, the former Eternit executives were convicted by an Italian court of causing the asbestos-related deaths of more than 3,000 people. NB. The prison terms were increased to 18 years in an appeal case. But the conviction was overturned in 2014, with the Court of Cessation dismissing the charges because they were out of time.
Urgent action from the government is required to deal with the huge death toll from work-related cancer, the TUC has said. The TUC call came as government-backed research published in the British Journal of Cancer confirmed 37 new cases of occupational cancer are diagnosed every day of the year, with a worker dying of the condition caused by their job once every hour around the clock.
Unions have called for urgent action to protect workers and the public from diesel exhaust fumes after the common workplace hazard was confirmed as a proven cause of cancer in humans. An expert panel convened by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a United Nations body, announced on 11 June 2012 that diesel had been reclassified as a top rated ‘Group 1’ carcinogen. The UK union confederation TUC said: “This research proves categorically what many unions have claimed for years which is that exposure to diesel exhaust is a significant workplace killer. Unfortunately many employers see diesel exposure as being something they can do nothing about. This is not the case.” They industry lobby was accused of using dirty tricks to undermine the case for the higher diesel cancer rating.
Workers in the US are suffering slow, agonising deaths from occupational diseases because improved standards on well-established killers like beryllium and silica, both linked to cancer and serious lung diseases, are being stalled by industry interference and a legislative system that can keep new rules on the back burner indefinitely. Rena Steinzor, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and president of the Center for Progressive Reform, said: “OSHA hasn’t made a serious run at regulating chemicals in the workplace in a couple of decades.”
A dispute about priorities for cancer prevention simmered in the medical press, with top occupational and environmental cancer experts hitting back at those who said the focus should be limited to improving ‘lifestyle’. The debate resurfaced in The Lancet Oncology in June 2012, with US and UK academics challenging the view “that people will be diverted from addressing their risky lifestyles by too much public concern about environmental and occupational exposures,” adding: “This view implies that people cannot hold two thoughts in their heads at the same time and we cannot as a society try to prevent cancer with several causes.”
Jamie Page, Paul Whaley, Andrew Watterson and Richard Clapp. Priorities for cancer prevention, The Lancet Oncology, volume 13, issue 6, Page e230, June 2012. Risks 559.
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).
