In August 2000, the UK national union body TUC called on trade unions to be on the lookout for new workplace diseases .In a special TUC-backed ‘Surveying the damage’ report in the workers’ health journal Hazards, union safety reps were urged to ask their workmates what health problems they are experiencing, so that detailed research can identify previously hidden occupational diseases. As part of the plan, TUC training was to be provided for safety reps on techniques such as “body mapping”. TUC highlighted the findings of a worker-based study into the effects of the chemical vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) carried out with financial support from the TUC and a number of organisations in North Derbyshire. It said it “believes that many other diseases caused by work, including large numbers of cancers, could currently be being wrongly classified as ‘lifestyle’ diseases.”

TUC news release, 15 August, 2000. Surveying the damage: A guide to do-it-yourself health and safety research, Hazards, number 71, July-September 2000.

People whose jobs expose them to high levels of diesel fumes face an increased risk of lung cancer, a study by Swedish researchers found. Machinery and motor mechanics, miners and truck, bus, construction plant and forklift truck drivers were all identified as at risk. The authors said 2.7 per cent of all lung cancers could be attributed to diesel exhaust. They added: “The analysis of relative risk in relation to cumulative dose indicated an increased risk of lung cancer in the highest dose group, and a dose-response trend was present in terms of cumulative dose.” In 2013, a paper estimated the diesel exhaust component could be 5 per cent. In 2012, IARC gave diesel exhaust fumes a top group 1 ranking as a proven human carcinogen. This came after an industry campaign to try and block the move.

Per Gustavsson and others. Occupational Exposure and Lung Cancer Risk: A Population-based Case-Referent Study in Sweden, American Journal of Epidemiology, volume 152, number 1, pages 32-34, 2000.

More than one in five workers across Europe are exposed to causing substances at work, a study found. The European Union’s CAREX project assessed occupational carcinogen exposures from 1990 to 1993 by member state across the European Union. It found: “About 32 million workers (23 per cent of those employed) in the EU were exposed to agents covered by CAREX. At least 22 million workers were exposed to IARC group 1 carcinogens.” These are substances known to cause cancer in humans. The figures for Great Britain were broadly in line with the EU average. Above 5 million workers were estimated to be to be exposed to cancer causing substances, affecting 22 per cent of the workforce. Top exposures in Great Britain (based on workers exposed at least 75 per cent of the time) were tobacco smoke and solar radiation, followed by crystalline silica and radon, diesel engine exhaust, wood dust, benzene, ethylene dibromide, lead and inorganic lead compounds, glasswool and chromium VI compounds. Asbestos is excluded from the analysis. The paper noted: “According to the preliminary estimates, there were circa 5 million workers (22 per cent of the employed) exposed to the agents covered by CAREX in Great Britain in 1990-93. The number of exposures was circa 7 million”. Other recent studies have suggested the at-risk group may in fact be increasing. Even by the CAREX estimate, over a fifth of the UK workforce has been exposed to possible human carcinogens and for these workers most of the resultant cancers will only emerge in a couple of decades or more.

Timo Kauppinen and others. Occupational exposure to carcinogens in the European Union, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, volume 57, pages 10-18, January 2000.

A campaign by trades unions, hazards activists and the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat ended in success on 24 November 1999 with the introduction of a UK ban on the importation, sale or use of asbestos products. This made the UK the 10^th European Union country to implement a ban, ahead of a January 2005 EU-wide deadline. A World Trade Organisation to the European Union ban was dismissed.

Asbestos (Prohibitions) (Amendment) Regulations 1999, Statutory Instrument SI 1999 No.2373. International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS).

Workers are losing out because of a common test of whether a condition is occupational is based on bad calculations. Sander Greenland, writing in the American Journal of Public Health, said the doubling of relative risk (RRx2) requirement, commonly used to establish whether a cancer is occupational and to determine whether compensation is payable, was “a methodologic error that has become a social problem.” He explained: “The first problem is that the probability of causation cannot be computed solely from the relative risk. In particular, when exposure accelerates the time of disease occurrence, the standard epidemiological estimates of probability of causation will tend to underestimate that probability. The second problem is that the exposure dose at which the probability of causation exceeds 50 per cent (the point at which exposure causation is more likely than not) may fall well below the ‘doubling dose’ (the dose at which the incidence of disease is doubled).”

Greenland S (1999). Relation of probability of causation to relative risk and doubling dose: a methodologic error that has become a social problem. American Journal of Public Health, volume 89(8), pages 1166-9.

On 27 July 1999, the European Commission announced that all member states must introduce an asbestos ban by January 2005 at the latest. On 24 August 1999, the UK government announced a national ban would take effect on 24 November 1999. It was a major landmark in a 24 year push by Hazards magazine and campaigners. The magazine noted: “The challenge now is to stop the deadly asbestos trade with the developing world.” The industry was continuing a well-resourced global marketing campaign, underwritten in part by Canadian government money.

Last gasp for asbestos: A dying industry, Hazards, number 67, July-September 1999 [not online]. Hazards asbestos webpages.

The UK’s standard setting system for hazardous substances frequently makes setting tighter standards difficult or impossible, a feature in Hazards magazine warns. It warns chemicals at work can be the one thing at work where you always get more than you bargained for.  The article says “three things stand in the way of better standards: The current protocols for standard setting; bureaucratic inertia; and, sometimes, an industry veto on potentially costly controls.” It cites as an example the case of methylene chloride (also known as dichloromethane).  “In 1998, the US safety enforcement agency agreed a more stringent exposure level for methylene chloride, one quarter the current UK limit. Getting exposures down to the level was not a problem – the US solvent industry association was party to the agreement that ushered in the new standard. Over here, in July 1999, HSE issued a consultative document proposing not only that the existing lax UK exposure level be retained, but it should also be downgraded from a binding MEL [maximum exposure limit] to a less stringent OES [occupational exposure standard].” In 2014 the UK was the only EU government to apply for a derogation from the blanket Europe-wide ban on use of the chemical as a paint stripper. It claimed this was needed for specialist work on historic buildings. No such request was made by other governments, which have their share of historic buildings too.

Unhealthy standards: UK review of chemical exposure limits – time for some level thinking, Hazards, number 67, July-September 1999 [not online].

Proposals for maximum exposure limits, occupational exposure standards and biological monitoring guidance values, CD150/99, HSE, July 1999 [not online].

This paper notes: “One fact remains abundantly clear: for every known human carcinogen that has been tested adequately in laboratory animals, the findings of carcinogenicity are concordant.” According to Watterson (2014): “In this major paper, Huff looks at the predictive value of animal studies and examines long-term carcinogenesis bioassays used to identify human carcinogens and their drawbacks. The importance of mixtures and a host of factors, including occupational exposures to cancer etiology, are discussed: though difficult such factors could be explored experimentally. The higher public health risks from false negatives are noted.”

James Huff.  Long-term chemical carcinogenesis bioassays predict human cancer hazards: Issues, controversies, and uncertainties, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, volume 895, pages 56-79, 1999.

The Industrial Injuries Advisory Council considered ‘diseases induced by ionising and non-ionising radiation’ and made a number of recommendations that were accepted by government.  IIAC said that the diseases prescribed in relation to ionising radiation should be leukaemia, and cancers of the bone, female breast, testis and thyroid. It added that each of these cancers should only be prescribed for doses of ionising radiation sufficient to double the risk of its occurrence. IIAC also recommend that no form of skin cancer should be prescribed in relation to ultraviolet radiation. The changes took effect in July 2000.

Diseases induced by Ionising and Non-Ionising Radiation, Cm 4280, IIAC, March 1999 [pre-2000 IIAC papers are not available online].

A 1999 paper in the British Journal of Cancer concluded trends in asbestos-related mesothelioma deaths indicated over a quarter of a million men in western Europe will die of this cancer alone over the following 35 years. The paper predicted deaths from the disease among men in Western Europe would almost double form 5,000 in 1998 to about 9,000 in 2018. The research focused on six countries – Britain, Italy, France, The Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. The paper indicated there would be one asbestos-related lung cancer death for every mesothelioma death, pushing the asbestos toll in Western Europe to half a million in the following 35 years. The estimate was contested in Hazards magazine, which said other experts say there could be up to three lung cancer deaths related to asbestos for every mesothelioma death – which would bring the toll over the next generation to 1 million needless deaths.

J Peto and others. The European mesothelioma epidemic, British Journal of Cancer, volume 79, number 3/4, page 666-672, 1999.

One million needless deaths, Hazards, number 65, January-March 1999 [not online].