A medical research project is investigating links between the region’s steelworks and bladder cancer, an association first spotted by a groundbreaking grassroots workplace health project. Simon Pickvance said: “I spoke to about 30 different people in five different practices and what transpired immediately was that some of them had worked with dyes.” The dyes were commonly used in crack testing of metals.

Sheffield Star. Risks 510.

A United Nations agency has said mobile phone use is “possibly carcinogenic”. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) expert panel this week decided to classify “radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless phone use.”

IARC news release [pdf]. BBC News Online. Risks 508.

Authorities in Korea have for the first time accepted cancer among workers in the semiconductor industry as an occupational disease. On 23 June, the Seoul Administrative Court ordered Samsung Electronics to compensate the families of two workers, Hwang Yumi and Lee Sookyoung, who died of acute myeloid leukaemia, a white blood cell cancer.

SHARPS news report. Korea Herald. Risks 512.

More stringent controls on industrial chemicals could support job creation in the US while protecting health and the environment, a new report has concluded. The study, produced by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) and commissioned by the BlueGreen Alliance, shows that innovation in sustainable chemistry can reverse the industry’s job shedding trend in a market that increasingly requires cleaner, safer production.

BGA news release and full report, The economic benefits of a green chemical industry in the United States: Renewing manufacturing jobs while protecting health and the environment. In These Times. Risks 506.

The Institute of Occupational Medicine has backed a union push for a dramatic reduction in the amount of dust allowed in workplace air. Unions have for over two years been pressing an intransigent Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to reduce the occupational exposure limit for general workplace dust to a quarter the current level and to run a campaign to raise awareness of dust dangers.

The IOM’s position on occupational exposure limits for dust, May 2011 [pdf]. Delivering for health: HSE action on occupational respiratory disease [pdf], paper to the HSE board meeting, December 2010 [minutes]. Risks 506.

In April 2011 the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) announced Phase 2 of its occupational cancer research work, this time looking at ‘predicting the future burden of occupational cancer’. A methodology, produced by Sally Hutchings and Lesley Rushton of Imperial College London for HSE, noted: “In summary, a method is presented here to estimate the future burden of occupational cancer that facilitates testing of the effect of a range of potential interventions. The method is adaptable to situations where data, in particular exposure level data, are sparse; it is most robust in allowing comparison between intervention effects, and where a broad estimate of future burden across

exposures is required. However it can also be adapted to assess impacts of policy in specific industries, and can be adapted to use higher quality exposure data if available.”

Research Report 849 – Predicting the future burden of occupational cancer – methodology, HSE April 2011 [full report].

The paper addresses the problems of researching the subject because of the serious limitations of many cancer mortality information systems, the varied and small workplaces, the problems of tracking the exposed populations, and the fact that most occupational cancers are clinically indistinguishable from non-occupational ones. It notes: “Most workplaces in developing countries are ‘informal’, i.e. they are not regularly surveyed/inspected and laws for workers’ protection are not implemented. Research on occupational risks in informal workplaces and the related cancer burden is needed. The results of studies addressing exposures among informal workers are difficult to generalize because of the specificities of social contexts, and study populations are small. The estimation of the burden of cancers attributable to occupational exposures is also made difficult by the fact that occupational cancers are usually clinically indistinguishable from those unrelated to occupation.”

Vilma Santana and Fatima Ribeiro. Occupational cancer burden in developing countries and the problem of informal workers, Environmental Health, volume 10 (Supplement 1): S10, 2011.

The Industrial Injuries Advisory Council (IIAC) has refused to recommend that foundry workers who develop lung cancer should qualify for industrial injuries benefit, despite acknowledging the job is linked to the cancer. IIAC noted: “Studies published since the council’s last review in 1986 suggest an increased risk of lung cancer in foundry workers when considered overall. But no strong evidence was found for a specific type of work or duration of exposure within the foundry industry. A doubling of risk is an important criterion for prescription of a disease under the Industrial Injuries Scheme. As there was no evidence of a doubling of risk, the council was therefore unable to make recommendations for adding lung cancer in foundry workers to the list of prescribed diseases for which people can claim Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit.” In 1984, the International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded there was ‘limited evidence’ that foundry work causes lung cancer. The same year, a study in a UK foundry found lung cancer rates approaching the IIAC double risk threshold.

Lung cancer and foundry workers, IIAC position paper 29, 29 March 2011.

Also see: AC Fletcher and A Ades. Lung cancer mortality in a cohort of English steel foundry workers, Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment and Health, volume 10, number 1, pages 7-16, 1984.

Researchers from the World Health Organisation (WHO) has calculated the death toll due to the use of chemical substances. In 2004, chemical substances caused 4.9 million deaths (or 8 per cent of total mortality); when related ill-health is factored in, the number of years of life lost reached 86 million (5 per cent of the total).

Annette Prüss-Ustün, Carolyn Vickers, Pascal Haefliger and Roberto Bertollini. Knowns and unknowns on burden of disease due to chemicals: a systematic review, Environmental Health, volume 10, number 9, 2011, doi:10.1186/1476-069X-10-9. Risks 499.

Reemoving carcinogens and reducing exposures to carcinogens is preferable and possible, a paper in the New England Journalof Medicine has concluded. It notes that of the 80,000 chemicals in products on the US market – many of which are imported – only 200 have been adequately tested for carcinogenicity. Since 1971, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has evaluated the cancer-causing potential of only around 900 agents and processes and identified 165 as carcinogenic or probably carcinogenic to humans with 249 as possibly carcinogenic although WHO and IARC estimates indicate the global fraction of cancers due to toxic environmental exposures could be between 7 per cent to 19 per cent. A prevention approach linked to stronger environmental laws and regulation is highlighted.

David Christiani. Combating the environmental causes of cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, 364: pages 2266-2268, 3 March 2011.