A beryllium producer and trade union have made a joint appeal for a stringent legally-binding exposure limit for the highly dangerous metal. The call from the United Steelworkers (USW) and Materion Brush came as they announced they had reached agreement on a model beryllium standard and had sent it to the official Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as a joint recommendation.

Risks 543.

Cancers caused by the jobs we do kill one person in the UK every 30 minutes around the clock, a TUC report has revealed. ‘Occupational cancer – a workplace guide’ says the prevention of workplace cancer has a much lower profile in the workplace than preventing injuries, “despite the fact that only 220 to 250 workers die each year as a result of an immediate injury as opposed to the 15,000 to 18,000 that die from cancer.” Urging more preventive efforts, the TUC noted: “Following pressure from unions, a large number of employers have managed to substitute cancer-causing chemicals with safer ones. Examples include trichloroethylene as a cleaner for metal, cancer-causing inks in printing, and formaldehyde and insulating foams in furniture.”

Occupational cancer – a workplace guide, TUC, February 2012 [pdf].
Occupational cancer – the figures: briefing for activists, February 2012. Risks 542,.

Publication of a landmark US government study probing whether diesel engine exhaust causes lung cancer in miners — already 20 years in the making — was delayed by industry and congressional insistence on seeing study data and documents before the public does.

Washington Post, 6 February 2012. Risks 542.

Progress on a new safer official US workplace exposure limit for cancer-causing silica dust has been frustrated by the business lobby for over a decade. But a bid by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to finally introduce stricter controls on silica has hit a second brick wall – a review process run by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that has stalled the ready-to-go standard since 14 February 2011. The National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, which advises the Labor Department, issued a statement in December 2011 saying it was ‘deeply distressed’ that the proposed new regulations had been under review for so long. ‘The current standard is many decades old and is insufficient to protect workers from this serious occupational health hazard,’ the advisory committee noted. ‘The silica rule delay is extraordinary and without explanation, and there is no indication as to when the review will be concluded.’

Union of Concerned Scientists news release. NPR Morning Edition. Huffington Post. AFL-CIO Now blog. Risks 541.

An International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) monograph concluded “there is sufficient evidence in humans that asbestos causes mesothelioma and cancer of the lung, larynx, and ovary.”

International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) monograph 100c, January 2012.

This report published by the European Commission examines the test methods for this group of chemicals and notes evidence of increases in many endocrine-related disorders in humans has strengthened since the 1990s. The issue is important especially with regard to breast cancer and prostate cancer, which have been linked in recent studies to occupation (or parental occupation) and exposure to a range of endocrine disrupters.

Andreas Kortenkamp, Olwenn Martin, Michael Faust and others. State of the art assessment of endocrine disrupters: final report. Brussels: European Commission, Directorate General, Environment, 2011.

Lawyers are warning of a ‘ticking timebomb’ as workers exposed to carcinogenic chemicals from the 1950s to the 1970s develop potentially fatal cancers. Pauline Chandler from the law firm Pannone said “my fear is that workers in a number of industries, including; the chemicals sector, paint production, rubber manufacture and pigments and dyestuffs production, will develop cancers and be unaware that they are related to their past employment.” The Health and Safety Executive’s ‘conservative’ 2007 estimates indicate that over 500 people develop occupational bladder cancer each year, and around 250 people die of the work-related condition.

Pannone Solicitors. The Guardian. Risks 536,.

Six major international clothing brands have announced a ‘joint roadmap’ intended to dramatically reduce the use of hazardous chemicals in their supply chains. Adidas Group, C&A, H&M, Li Ning, Nike Inc and Puma say the initiative will lead the apparel and footwear industry towards zero discharge of hazardous chemicals by 2020. The initiative is a direct response to ‘Dirty Laundry’, a July 2011 report from Greenpeace which exposed toxic use and related pollution in production facilities in China. The roadmap commits the firms to identify all chemicals used in textile manufacturing, a phase-out of hazardous chemicals and to projects to encourage sector wide chemical disclosure.

ChemSec news report. Dirty Laundry, Greenpeace, July 2011. Risks 535.

A report that concluded nearly half of cancers diagnosed in the UK each year – over 130,000 in total – are caused by avoidable lifestyle ‘choices’ including smoking, drinking and eating the wrong things, has been criticised for downplaying occupational and environmental cancer risks and the social class effects that consign many workers and their families to multiple risks.

D Max Parkin and others. The fraction of cancer attributable to lifestyle and environmental factors in the UK in 2010, British Journal of Cancer, volume 105, Issue S2 (Si-S81), 6 December 2011. Alliance for Cancer Prevention news release. BBC News Online. The Guardian and related letters. Risks 536, 17 December 2011.

Tens of thousands of people in the UK die every year as a result of dust exposures at work. It’s all preventable, unions say. And they are sick of our official workplace health guardian, the Health and Safety Executive, saying it’s just a bit of a ‘nuisance’. Many of the exposures are linked to chronic disorders, including cancer.

Hazards 116, October-December 2011.