More protective laws, effective enforcement and unrelenting union action are needed to address Europe’s ‘immense’ occupational cancer problem, a top safety researcher has warned.

Laurent Vogel from the Brussels-based trade union research body ETUI points to research showing that cancers induced by working conditions kill over 100,000 people in the European Union each year.

Writing in the TUC’s Stronger Unions blog, he said: “Cancers account for 53 per cent of work-related deaths compared to just 2 per cent for work accidents. Every one of these deaths can be prevented.” The union safety expert added: “To do away with workplace cancers, there must be a stronger framework of laws, more checks by health and safety inspectors, and no let-up in union action to get human life valued more than company profits.”

On 4 March 2015, German, Austrian, Belgian and Dutch labour ministers sent a joint letter to the European Commission calling for an urgent review of the Directive on exposure to carcinogens and mutagens at work and making specific proposals to strengthen the law.

TUC Stronger Unions blog, 12 March 2015. Risks 695.

A long-delayed report into the presence of asbestos in schools was finally published on 12 March, after “sustained pressure” from education unions. Hundreds of teachers and other education staff have died of asbestos related diseases since 2003, the Department for Education report found.

Asbestos Victims Support Groups Forum chair Doug Jewell said the report was “only one step on a long journey.” He said: “The findings of this review need to be built on and most importantly we need long term strategic policies that will eradicate asbestos from our schools.”

The publication of the review came days after the Asbestos in Schools campaign revealed its freedom of information requests had established up to 86 per cent of UK schools contain asbestos. The group estimated that between 200 and 300 people could die each year as a consequence of their asbestos exposure as a child at school in the 1960s and 1970s.

Department for Education asbestos review. NUT news release. GMB news release. IBAS news report. Asbestos Forum news release. Asbestos in Schools newsletter. Risks 695.

Common industrial chemicals that disrupt human hormones and damage health could be costing Europe more than £110 billion a year, according to new research.

The international team behind the research presented their findings at the annual meeting of the Endocrinology Society in Brussels. They said their estimates on the high economic impact of chemicals in products including pesticides, plastics and flame retardants were “conservative.”

The findings were published online on 5 March in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. EDCs have been implicated in the higher breast cancer rates found in workers in a range of industries including agriculture, plastics, food packaging, metal manufacture and the bar and gambling industries.

Endocrine Society website and news release. BBC News Online. Risks 694.
Leonardo Trasande, R Thomas Zoeller, Ulla Hass and others. Estimating burden and disease costs of exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the European Union, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, published online 5 March 2015.

Prison guards and inmates should be protected from passive smoking risks in communal prison areas, a High Court ruling indicates. The ruling was made after an inmate brought a case complaining about the health impact of secondhand smoke. The government had argued that as Crown premises, state prisons were exempt from smoke-free legislation.

Leigh Day news release. BBC News Online. Risks 694.

Almost all asbestos cancers are being missed by Spain’s official reporting system, a study has found, raising concerns that frequently terminally ill workers are also missing out on compensation.

A team headed by Alfredo Menéndez-Navarro of the University of Granada looked at the number of reported asbestos-related cancer cases between 1978 and 2011. These cancers were first officially recognised in Spain in 1978, a move that was expected to result in greater recognition and compensation payouts. But, according to the paper in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, only 164 cases of asbestos-related cancer were recognised in the 33-year period under scrutiny.

The researchers say this count misses almost all the cancers related to asbestos. For mesothelioma, they estimate 93.6 per cent of cases in men and 99.7 per cent in women are missing. For asbestos related lung cancers, the effect is worse still, with 98.8 per cent of bronchial and lung cancers in men and 100 per cent in women going unrecognised.

The authors conclude it is essential to establish a system for information on and monitoring of asbestos-related cancers – identified as mesothelioma, cancers of the larynx, lungs or ovaries – to ensure for the victims the compensation to which they are entitled. They note the number of people affected in Spain is expected to increase in the coming years.

“These findings provide evidence of gross under-recognition of asbestos-related occupational cancers in Spain,” the paper notes. “Future work should investigate cases treated in the National Healthcare System to better establish the impact of asbestos on health in Spain.”

García-Gómez M, Menéndez-Navarro A, López RC. Asbestos-related occupational cancers compensated under the Spanish National Insurance System, 1978-2011, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health (IJOEH), volume 21, number 1, pages 31-39, January-March 2015. Eurogip. Risks 693.

The body that advises the UK government on additions to the ‘prescribed industrial disease’ list has said cancers of the larynx or ovary linked to asbestos exposure should not be added to the list.

The Industrial Injuries Advisory Council (IIAC) reviewed the evidence for prescription – including a condition on the list eligible for government Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit payments – after a request from the Asbestos Victims Support Groups’ Forum. This was prompted by the publication in 2012 of an International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) monograph that concluded “there is sufficient evidence in humans that asbestos causes mesothelioma and cancer of the lung, larynx, and ovary.” Lung cancer and mesothelioma related to asbestos are already recognised for payouts, but cancers of the larynx and ovary are not.

Declining to add cancer of the larynx caused by asbestos to the list, IIAC noted “that the evidence of a doubling of risk of laryngeal cancer associated with asbestos exposure remains inconsistent.” For cancer of the ovary, IIAC “concluded that exposures to asbestos probably increase the risk of ovarian cancer and may do so by more than two-fold if very high.” It said however the exposure level causing a doubling of risks is difficult to define so IIAC “does not therefore recommend prescription for cancer of the ovary in relation to asbestos exposure.”

Critics of the IIAC system say the doubling of risk criteria it uses rules out most occupational cancers and is an arbitrary rule that sets an unfair benchmark not required by the regulations governing IIAC’s operation. Cancer of the larynx caused by asbestos is already recognised for state compensation payouts in countries including Germany, France, Denmark and Italy.

IIAC summary and Cancers of the larynx or ovary and work with asbestos: IIAC information note, February 2015. IARC Monograph 100C, 2012. Risks 692.

Sufferers of an asbestos-related cancer will in the future receive extra payouts after the government revised its mesothelioma compensation rules. Under new rules for the government’s Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme compensation will rise to match 100 per cent of average civil claims, up from the current 80 per cent.

Adrian Budgen of personal injury law firm Irwin Mitchell said the change left other flaws in the scheme untouched. He said: “The increase in payments should of course be welcomed but it is disappointing that it isn’t retrospective. It is also disappointing that mesothelioma sufferers diagnosed before 25 July 2012, who would otherwise have been eligible for a payment, were excluded from the outset. The scheme has a number of inadequacies but, for those people who have received payments to date, it has afforded them some financial security.”

DWP news release and ministerial written statement. Risks 690.

There must be a far greater acknowledgement of the role of work in causing cancers, the UK Chartered Society for Worker Health Protection (BOHS) has warned. Commenting on World Cancer Day – 4 February –  BOHS said that neglecting to understand and control occupational exposures to carcinogens, by means of highly effective occupational hygiene solutions, threatens future progress in the battle against the disease.

It added that it was “concerned that, all too often, the work-related causes of cancer fail to be properly acknowledged and are overlooked in the media and other sources of information about cancer.” Simple and cost-effective solutions could “eliminate” workplace risks, it said.

BOHS news release. World Cancer Day. Global unions zero cancer campaign. Risks 690.

Europe’s workplaces are using 5,675 chemicals that manufacturers or importers consider to be carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic for reproduction (CMR).

The figures come in a January report of notifications to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). ECHA compared the data supplied by manufacturers and importers when notifying the classification and labelling of hazardous substances under the classification, labelling and packaging regulations (CLP) with the registration dossiers submitted by firms handling larger quantities of chemicals under the REACH rules.

Of the 5,675 chemicals marketed in the EU that manufacturers or importers regarded as CMRs, just 1,169 were registered – a discrepancy that alarmed the union thinktank ETUI. “Why this is – and what makes NGOs and trade unions deeply unhappy – is that the REACH regulation only requires CMRs produced in Europe or imported in quantities of one tonne or more a year to be registered,” said the ETUI’s chemical risks expert Tony Musu.

ETUI said “a large number of CMRs are floating around the EU market outside the REACH registration procedure” intended to keep tabs on the risks of these hazardous chemicals to consumers’ and workers’ health.

ETUI news report. ECHA news release and report, 19 January 2015. Risks 689.

Firefighters who worked at a training facility in the Australian state of Victoria have a higher incidence of skin, testicular and brain cancers, a comprehensive study has found. The study, conducted by Monash University, examined cancer and death rates linked to the Country Fire Authority’s (CFA) Fiskville site between 1971 and 1999 (Risks 565).

It found 69 cancers among the 606 people who worked and trained there, resulting in 16 deaths. Researchers found a cancer cluster in the high-risk group – those who worked full-time on the site training firefighters, and who were exposed to flammable chemicals, combustion, foams and recycled firewater. Of 95 high-risk workers traced, 25 had cancer and six had died from their cancer, the study found. A parliamentary commission of inquiry launched in December 2014 is expected to conclude in June this year.

The United Firefighters Union (UFU) Victorian branch, which had campaigned for recognition of the cancer risk to its members, welcomed the report and called for the immediate resignation of CFA chief executive Mick Bourke. UFU’s Mick Tisbury said: “He and the CFA have been denying there was anything wrong with the place for years, they have put our health and safety at risk. We’re not expendable. We have families. We are people.”

Research co-investigator Professor Malcolm Sim said: “Their death rates from other causes of disease, like heart and respiratory disease, were quite low, because these are healthy, fit people. That’s why their cancer results stood right out. There was a big gap between cancer and other diseases you don’t usually see in people like this, with healthy lifestyles.”

Monash University news release and full report. UFU Victoria notice and news release. Victorian Premier Andrew Daniels’ news release. ABC News. The Age. The Guardian. Risks 688.