The UK Health and Safety Executive’s developing approach to occupational hygiene – the measurement of exposures to chemicals, dust and other exposures at work – has come in for scathing criticism.

Hans Kromhout, based at Utrecht University’s Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, said he was ‘amazed’ to hear an HSE presentation on ‘hygiene without numbers’. Writing in the Annals of Occupational Hygiene, he indicated the approach fell in line with the UK government’s attack on ‘red tape.’ He added: “The old mantras of ‘measurements are expensive’, ‘measurements delay control measures’, ‘with statistics you can prove anything’, and of course ‘if you provide enough guidance on best practices everything will be well-controlled’ made up the gist of the message.”

Kromhout noted: “Such numberless interventions may be appealing to policymakers, who face the hefty task of creating meaningful and economically feasible guidelines for workplace health. However, treating workers’ exposure to chemical, biological, or physical agents as a static entity that can be satisfactory controlled by guidance sheets is factually wrong and ignores the intrinsic variability of occupational exposure.”

His paper concludes: “Preventing occupational hygiene to follow the path of demise like its sister discipline occupational medicine in the UK should be our first priority. Cutting red tape – resulting in fewer carefully inspected and controlled European workplaces – may ‘solve’ the issue of the burden of collecting numbers in the short term, but this is likely to produce thousands of preventable cases of occupational disease and untimely disability. ‘Hygiene Without Numbers’ comes with a price and we all know who will have to pick up the bill.”

Kären Clayton, director of HSE’s long latency health risks division, has made a number of recent conference presentations referring to the ‘hygiene without numbers’ theme.

• Hans Kromhout. Commentary: Hygiene without numbers, Annals of Occupational Hygiene, published online ahead of print, 2016. doi:10.1093/annhyg/mev096

Chemical safety rules are not a burden on businesses, but deliver a substantial net benefit, a new report has concluded.

The bigger picture, published by the chemical safety think tank ChemSec, concludes chemical regulation creates opportunities for many progressive companies. It uses case studies to show these companies are not only opting for safer chemicals, but are finding the alternatives are frequently better too. ChemSec said the Europe-wide REACH chemical safety framework “offers an opportunity for Europe’s economy to keep evolving; the question is in which direction.”

Anne-Sofie Andersson, the director of ChemSec, commented: “Do we really want to accommodate laggard companies that aim to keep using hazardous chemicals, which in turn will work against the purpose of circular economy, or do we want to look to the future and stimulate innovative businesses creating safe products fit for a new economy?”

The report notes that using hazardous chemicals is itself a costly option. Frida Hök, ChemSec’s policy advisor, said: “We urge policy makers to include several aspects in their assessments whether to regulate a chemical or not, similar to the way progressive companies do when they assess the benefits of substitution.”

She added: “They do not just consider chemical prices in a straightforward per kilo comparison, rather they look at the bigger picture and include more parameters, like costs of waste handling, worker safety, consumer satisfaction, to name a few. Combining all these factors makes it clear that substitution can give a competitive advantage on the market, making it economically beneficial.”

The report features the case of US firm Lumber Liquidators, whose share price plummeted when it was found their products contained high levels of carcinogenic formaldehyde, leading to the resignation of the company CEO in May 2015. Further revelations this week about formaldehyde emissions from Lumber Liquidators products saw the share price sink still further.

• The bigger picture: Assessing economic aspects of chemicals substitution, ChemSec, February 2016.

Ford Motor Company spent $40 million on scientific studies designed to cast doubt on the link between asbestos brake linings and cancers including mesothelioma, an investigation has found.

The probe by the Washington DC-based Center for Public Integrity found the firm, stung by asbestos disease lawsuits involving mechanics, first retained toxicologist Dennis Paustenbach, then vice-president at the consulting firm Exponent, in 2001.

“Thus began a relationship that, according to recent depositions, has enriched Exponent by $18.2 million and brought another $21 million to Cardno ChemRisk, a similar firm Paustenbach founded in 1985, left and restarted in 2003,” CPI claims. “All told, testimony shows, Ford has spent nearly $40 million funding journal articles and expert testimony concluding there is no evidence brake mechanics are at increased risk of developing mesothelioma.”

This finding, recounted countless times in courtrooms and law offices over the past 15 years, is an attempt at scientific misdirection aimed at extricating Ford from lawsuits, critics say.

John Dement, a professor in Duke University’s Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, said: “Fifteen years ago, I thought the issue of asbestos risk assessment was pretty much defined. All they’ve accomplished is to try to generate doubt where, really, little doubt existed.”

David Egilman, a clinical professor of family medicine at Brown University and editor of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, argues that the papers are deceptive by design. “They can throw a lot of things at the wall and hope something sticks with the jury,” he said. “It forces people like me or other scientists to try to clean up each thing that was thrown at the wall, one at a time. And by the end of the day, that could be confusing to a jury or judge.”

The chemical industry responded to unexpectedly high numbers of brain tumours at a US plant by launching a flawed study to obscure the extent of the problem, the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) has found.

The CPI investigation, the latest in its Science for sale series, examined a cancer cluster affected workers at the sprawling Union Carbide plant south of Houston, Texas. More than 7,500 people had worked at the plant, now owned by Dow, since it opened in 1941. It took three years, but by the late 1970s scientists at the federal safety regulator OSHA and its research arm NIOSH, discovered 23 brain tumour deaths there – double the normal rate. It was the largest cluster of work-related brain tumours ever reported, and in 1979 became national news.

The leading suspect was vinyl chloride, a chemical used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic. Industry studies already had found higher-than-expected rates of brain cancer at vinyl chloride plants, and in 1979, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) took the unequivocal position that vinyl chloride caused brain tumours.

“Yet today, a generation later, the scientific literature largely exonerates vinyl chloride,” notes CPI. A 2000 industry review of brain cancer deaths at vinyl chloride plants found that the chemical’s link to brain cancer “remains unclear.” Citing that study and others, IARC in 2008 reversed its position.

However a CPI review of thousands of once-confidential documents showed that “the industry study cited by IARC was flawed, if not rigged.” Although that study was supposed to tally all brain cancer deaths of workers exposed to vinyl chloride, Union Carbide counted only one of the 23 brain tumour deaths in Texas City.

The Center’s investigation found that because of the way industry officials designed the study, it left out workers known to have been exposed to vinyl chloride, including some who had died of brain tumours. Excluding even a few deaths caused by a rare disease can dramatically change the results of a study, flipping a positive association on its head.

CPI warned that the decline in public funding for studies meant the “dominance of industry-funded research for specific chemicals has become more common.”

‘Rented white coats’ – scientists in the pay of vested interests – are defending toxic chemicals with horrific consequences for the workers these substances make ill.

A ‘Science for sale’ investigation by the Washington DC based Center for Public Integrity (CPI) found industry-backed research has exploded “as government-funded science dwindles. Its effects are felt not only in courtrooms but also in regulatory agencies that issue rules to try to prevent disease.”

CPI found substances like asbestos, arsenic and lead, whose deadly properties seem incontrovertible, have become subjects of ceaseless debate. It discovered corporations intent on obscuring damning evidence are steering millions of dollars to scientific consulting firms including Gradient, Chemrisk and Environ, group often employing scientists with links to prestigious institutions like Harvard.

It concludes this ‘tainted science’ is “used to fend off, or lessen the sting of, lawsuits filed on behalf of sick people.” It also stalls regulatory processes “and made it harder for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to protect workers. It creates doubt where little or none existed.”

The CPI investigation cautions that science on everything from air pollution, to asbestos risks to toxic chemicals like BPA, styrene and n-propyl bromide has been influenced by often ‘ridiculous’ industry-financed studies. But in casting doubt over the impartial science, people dying of related diseases are denied compensation and efforts to better control chemicals at work and in the wider environment are stalled or blocked entirely.

Asbestos financed scientists cited non-existent evidence to support claims made in a paper that downplayed the risks posed by chrysotile (white) asbestos, the only form of asbestos currently in commercial use.

Stefania Boccia and Carlo La Vecchia, the editors-in-chief of the journal Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health (EBPH), published an erratum in their current issue regarding the false information in a 2015 paper, ‘Critical reappraisal of Balangero chrysotile and mesothelioma risk’. Two of the four authors of this paper – Fred Pooley and John Hoskins – are UK-based scientists, while a third, Edward Ilgren, is listed as formerly of the faculty of biological sciences at Oxford University.

Their paper claims that cases of mesothelioma contracted by workers and nearby residents of the Balangero chrysotile asbestos mine in northern Italy were not caused by chrysotile asbestos and that the workers and residents must have been exposed to other forms of asbestos, adding there was “good evidence” this caused the harm. The article states that “Crocidolite and amosite (asbestos) were also transferred to Balangero in jute bags.” But the source cited in the paper to support this claim provides no such evidence, with the erratum admitting it was an “erroneous claim”.

This is the second erratum the article has attracted. An earlier correction came because of undisclosed conflicts of interest, and required Ilgren, Pooley and Hoskins  to disclose their previously unacknowledged ties to the asbestos lobby.

Human rights campaigner Kathleen Ruff, who exposed the errors and undeclared ties, noted: “Asbestos interests spend tens of millions of dollars for scientists to write articles that deny harm caused by chrysotile asbestos and claim that ‘anything but chrysotile (ABC)’ has caused harm. Workers and populations who are exposed to harm from chrysotile asbestos do not have tens of millions of dollars to spend to defend their right to health. Instead, they depend on scientists and scientific organisations to show integrity and uphold scientific and ethical standards.”

She said that the EBPH editors had been reluctant to publish either erratum.

EBPH joint editor Carlo La Vecchia had earlier been forced to publish an erratum to a May 2012 article he co-authored with Paulo Boffetta in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention, admitting their undeclared links to the asbestos industry.  Almost three years after publishing the original paper, both admitted they had acted for asbestos defendants in criminal trials in Italy.

• Edward B Ilgren, Frederick D Pooley, Yumi M Kumiya, John A Hoskins, Critical reappraisal of Balangero chrysotile and mesothelioma risk, Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health, volume 12, number 1, 2015. Erratum.

A South Korean court has ruled that exposure to carcinogens at a Samsung semiconductor factory caused a worker’s ovarian cancer. The Seoul Administrative Court said it saw a “significant causal relationship” between the disease and even a low level of toxic chemicals because the worker Lee Eun-joo was exposed to carcinogens over a long period.

Media reports note that Lee died in 2012 after battling ovarian cancer for more than a decade. She worked at a Samsung chip factory for six years from 1993, starting when she was 17-years-old. The court said the glues that Lee used to put a silicon wafer on a lead frame contained formaldehyde, a top rated group 1 International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) carcinogen, and phenol, a known promotor of tumours, according to its material safety data sheets.

The court also implicated night shifts and the factory’s ventilation system. It ordered the government compensation agency to compensate her family. The court also said the agency should be less stringent in deciding eligibility for compensation when the cause of the disease is not completely clear cut.

In 2004, another solvent used in the semiconductor industry, ethylene glycol methyl ether (EGME), was linked to an increased ovarian and breast cancer risk in women on hormone treatments.

Unions are to work throughout the Dutch Presidency of the European Union to develop a preventive approach to occupational cancer. During this presidency, which runs from January to June, the Dutch government has expressed a desire to update the EU Carcinogens and Mutagens Directive, a longstanding union objective.

A new report from the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) says the union objective is to “eliminate occupational cancer.” Promoting a six-point preventive charter, it urges unions to run a political and awareness campaign. This should include approaching embassies and consulates of the Netherlands to present the union campaign objectives, it notes.

The ETUC report notes: “At workplaces trade unions are demanding that dangerous substances and processes are eliminated or substituted with less dangerous ones. Likewise we are seeking to improve work organisation in order to avoid or minimise exposures to night and shift work. To reinforce this work we are calling for improvements to the legislative framework at EU level and we are seizing the opportunity created by the initiative of the Dutch Presidency.”

• Why we need to focus on work-related cancer, ETUC, January 2016.

A Canadian union leader has called for a national registry of the location of asbestos materials. The call from Philip Venoit, president of Vancouver Island Building and Construction Trades Council, came after latest figures from Statistics Canada revealed new cases of the asbestos cancer mesothelioma had doubled across the country, from 276 cases in 1992 to 560 cases in 2012.

Venoit has written to the Prime Minister’s Office and to several provincial premiers and mayors across the country. He has had no response from the PMO or from premiers, but says several mayors have expressed support. He called on federal, provincial and municipal governments to develop a national registry of all public buildings and vessels, such as navy ships, “and to make that registry online and available to all restoration and construction workers.”

He added the registry should identify the types of asbestos products in the buildings – such as floor tiles, ceiling tiles, insulation, drywall and pipe cladding – and provide instructions on how best to remove that material. “The baby boomer generation is well versed in asbestos,” he states in his letter, but warned: “We are on the eve of mass retirement with a new generation of workers who know very little of the harmful effects asbestos exposure can cause.”

Venoit urged the government to develop a national apprenticeship programme to ensure young workers know how to safely work with asbestos, and said the federal government should ban imports of asbestos.

The call for an asbestos ban was echoed by human rights campaigner Kathleen Ruff, a high profile critic of Canada’s long-time role promoting asbestos use worldwide. Writing in the RightOnCanada blog, she noted:” The new Canadian Liberal government has said that it will uphold scientific evidence and the public interest. To date, Canadian government policy on asbestos has been set by the asbestos industry, not science.

“It is time for the Trudeau government to end the decades-long complicity between the asbestos industry and the Canadian government. It is time that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Health Minister Jane Philpott show the kind of leadership that Canadians hoped for in electing them.”

Ruff added: “Health experts and civil society organisations in Canada and around the world have asked Prime Minister Trudeau and Health Minister Philpott to respect science, protect health and ban asbestos so that no more Canadians die needlessly and to show the world that Canada’s historic role of leading global promoter of the asbestos industry has finally ended.”

Two of five workers who developed bladder cancer while working at a chemical factory manufacturing dyes and pigments are demanding that the Japanese government recognise their illness as job-related.

Speaking to reporters in Tokyo, the pair called on their employer – Tokyo-based Mitsuboshi Chemical – to make urgent improvements in conditions at the plant in Fukui Prefecture. Employees Kenji Takayama and Yasuhiro Tanaka, both 56, have each worked at the plant for nearly 20 years. They say poor working conditions, including a lack of ventilation that routinely makes workers sick, could have caused the cancer.

The five who contracted bladder cancer were involved in mixing or drying aromatic amines, including the potent bladder carcinogen o-toluidine. One of the cancer sufferers has retired, but the four others remain with the company.

The health ministry is now looking into the possible association between the workers’ cancer and the factory environment, while Mitsuboshi Chemical has not commented on a possible link.

Hiroyuki Isobe, executive chair of the Kansai chapter of the Kagaku Ippan Rodo Kumiai Rengo,the union that represents the workers, said the union had just visited the Tokyo head office of Mitsuboshi Chemical.The company avoided comment on whether their contact with the chemicals was responsible for the cancers, Isobe said.

The case parallels that at a US Goodyear plant in Niagara Falls, where over 60 workers exposed to o-toluidine are reported to have developed bladder cancer.

In his award-winning 2008  book, Doubt is their product: How industry’s assault on science threatens your health, occupational health academic Dr David Michaels – now the head of US government safety regulator OSHA – notes the chemical industry led by DuPont conspired to cover up the cancer risks posed by o-toluidine (OT).

Writing in Hazards magazine in 2008, he notes: “Through a series of DuPont letters, reports and papers, the book demonstrates that DuPont managers witnessed this development and growth of this tragic epidemic, yet refused to acknowledge that OT could also cause bladder cancer, shipping the chemical out without proper warnings. As a result, dozens of workers exposed to OT in a plant in Niagara Falls, New York, USA, have developed bladder cancer.

“For many years, DuPont and other manufacturers have disputed the link between OT and human bladder cancer. Earlier this year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer evaluated OT and reached the same conclusion I did, too late for the Niagara Falls workers: OT is a human bladder carcinogen.”

In Tokyo, history could be repeating itself.