A heavyweight European Environmental Agency report notes that numerous reports have warned that failure to act promptly on early warnings has in the past led to entirely avoidable epidemics of occupational disease, including workplace asbestos, benzene and radiation cancers.
Late lessons from early warnings: The precautionary principle 1896-2000, European Environment Agency, Environmental issue report number 22, 2001.
After hearing reports that women workers at the National Semiconductor microchip factory in Greenock were suffering cancers, fertility problems, reproductive illnesses and
miscarriages, local advice worker Jim McCourt set up Phase 2 – People for Health and Safety in Electronics – a group representing sick employees. Here, he describes the company’s response to his concerns – a dirty tricks campaign that included spying on McCourt and the sick and dying women who worked at the company. In a report in Hazards magazine, the campaigner noted: “The whole episode has had a profound effect on my family, so much so that I have resigned from my job. After I finish in my current post I intend to expose fully all those complicit in the communications plan, make them accountable to me.”
Production lies: Revealed! US chips firm’s secret PR strategy to undermine Silicon Glen health campaigners, Hazards, number 76, October-December 2001.
This 2001 paper in The Lancet notes: “Primary prevention is a public health concern and should be reflected in all public health policies and strategies. Yet ‘real’ prevention – stopping disease before it starts – is not prioritised by the government. Clearly, government strategies need to be ‘joined-up’, and protecting health and the environment should be the over-riding priority.” It adds: “Current health strategies focus on decreasing death rates, rather than reducing incidence.”
Jane Stephenson, Michael S Katz, Tatiana Tcherednichenko, Qing Wu, Helen Lynn, Diana Ward and Paul Ellis. Cancer care: What are the priorities? The Lancet, volume 2, number 10, pages 636–641, October 2001.
Two independent US studies published in October 2001 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concluded that sleep interruption, especially in women working the graveyard shift, is associated in an increased risk of breast cancer. Working the graveyard shift increased the risk of breast cancer by 60 per cent, Dr Scott Davis and colleagues found, adding that the risks increased with increasing years and weekly hours working these shifts. In the second study, Dr Eva S Schernhammer and colleagues found an 8 per cent increase in breast cancer risk among nurses working rotating night shifts for up to 29 years. The women who had worked these shifts for more than 30 years had a 36 per cent increase in breast cancer risk. In a related editorial, Dr Johnni Hansen – whose later work, particularly papers published in 2010, would have a serious impact on the recognition of shift related breast cancer – noted that work at night was an increasing phenomenon, more commonplace than any other exposure to a known or potential cancer-cause. Over a decade after the 2001 studies, the UK safety regulator HSE was still facing criticism for a failure to act what became an established cancer risk factor.
Davis S and others. Night shift work, light at night, and risk of cancer, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, volume 93, number 20, pages 1557-62, 2001.
Schernhammer ES and others. Rotating shifts and risk of breast cancer in women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, volume 93, number 20, pages 1563-8, 2001.
Hansen J. Editorial: Light at night, shiftwork, and breast cancer risk, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, volume 93, number 20, pages 1513-5, 2001.
The author identified elevated stomach cancer risks in those workers in the regulated plant exposed to the fluid in precision grinding. Malignant and non-malignant liver disease mortality was elevated in assembly/testing and precision grinding.
Robert Park. Mortality at an automotive engine foundry and machining complex, Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, volume 43(5), pages 483-493, May 2001.
In May 2001, the UK union GMB launched a campaign targeting catering establishments where workers were exposed to carcinogenic fumes. The union demanded that all kitchens and catering establishments fit adequate ventilation and air purifying systems. The union pointed to a Health and Safety Executive study that found 65 per cent of commercial kitchens were insufficiently ventilated, and workers could be inhaling potentially deadly fumes.
Stop cooking up cancer, GMB, 2001 [not available online].
Industry has limitless creativity when it comes to shirking responsibility for its dangerous business, according to ‘Trust us, we’re experts’. The investigative book, sub-titled ‘How industry manipulates science and gambles with your future’, includes several examples of the industry PR ruses used to defend workplace toxins, including asbestos and other carcinogens. These include the creation of industry funded “astroturf” organisations and scientists funded to present the industry line as “impartial” facts.
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. Trust us, we’re experts, Tarcher/Putham, 2001.
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) researchers John Hodgson and Andrew Darnton published a report on the relatively risks of different forms of asbestos. They concluded the risks of chrysotile asbestos – the only form of asbestos used in the UK since the 1970s and which has accounted for the great majority of the asbestos ever used– were relatively low. The paper said chrysotile (white asbestos) caused one case of mesothelioma for every 100 caused by amosite (brown asbestos) and 500 caused by crocidolite (blue asbestos). In 2009, the same authors had to admit they had got their sums wrong – really wrong. Hodgson and Darnton said the ratio was really 1:10:50. Their original and wrong findings, however, were still being used in 2013 by the industry and the International Agency for Research on Cancer to support claims of the relative safety of chrysotile.
John T Hodgson and Andrew Darnton. The quantitative risks of mesothelioma and lung cancer in relation to asbestos exposure, The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, volume 44, issue 8, pages 565-601, 2000.
‘Stopping Breast Cancer Before is Starts – Putting Primary Prevention on the National Breast Cancer Agenda’ was a strategy launched by the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) at the House of Commons on 13 November 2000. The strategy built on WEN’s ‘Putting Breast Cancer on the Map’ project.
Stopping Breast Cancer Before is Starts – Putting Primary Prevention on the National Breast Cancer Agenda, Women’s Environmental Network, strategy launched at the House of Commons, 13 November 2000. Putting Breast Cancer on the Map.
Work-related cancers and other diseases were missed for years in workers employed by a Chesterfield plastics factory, a joint union and university study concluded in 2000. A total of 162 former employees of the Vinatex factory participated in a survey by Chesterfield Trade Union Safety Team (TRUST). Among other conditions, five cases of bladder cancer and five of skin cancer were identified, more than expected. The factory exposed workers to vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), the raw material for PVC and a known human carcinogen primarily linked to the liver angiosarcoma. The report of the survey, produced jointly with De Montfort University, concluded: “Only in January 2000 did the HSE search the HSE angiosarcoma register for cases involving Vinatex workers: this is a remarkable omission. The HSE could not then identify any angiosarcoma cases from the plant.” TRUST identified at least one angiosarcoma case missing from the HSE register.
Report on a health survey of ex-Vinatex workers, TRUST/Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, De Montfort University, June 2000. Reported in: How could you miss this?: A generation of cancers and ill-health, Hazards, number 72, October-December 2000. Also see 2009 Journal of Risk and Governance entry. The Vinatex study is featured in a 15 August 2000 TUC news release as an example of participatory research (see below).