date: 23 November 2005

embargo: 00.01hrs Friday 25 November 2005

Killer chemicals responsible for thousands of deaths a year, says TUC

Britain is facing an occupational cancer epidemic that could be killing up to 24,000 people every year, four times official estimates, according to a TUC report published today (Friday).

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says that just four per cent of the UK's annual cancer death toll (one in three people in the UK will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, one in four will die from it) is as a result of exposure to carcinogens at work, which it says is equal to 6,000 deaths a year.

However, the 'Burying the evidence' report by Hazards, the TUC-backed health and safety magazine, concludes that the incidence of occupational cancer in the UK is much higher, and suggests that it is between 12,000 and 24,000 deaths a year (the equivalent of 16 per cent of all cancer deaths in the UK).

Although there are limits regarding exposures to hazardous chemicals such as crystalline silica, radon, diesel engine exhaust, benzene and lead compounds in the UK, the TUC believes that many employers are risking the future well-being of their employees by not adhering strictly to the rules. More inspections of workplaces would make it difficult for employers to get away with needlessly exposing their staff to toxic substances, says the TUC.

'Burying the evidence' says that the reason why official figures so underestimate the scale of the problem in the UK is because HSE work in this area is based on now essentially flawed US research conducted almost 25 years ago.

The report believes that the failure of the HSE to upwardly revise its figures relating to the number of people who die each year as a result of occupational cancers is preventing the workplace cancer epidemic from being dealt with properly, and is exposing thousands of workers to untold risks.

Leading occupational cancer experts on both sides of the Atlantic have endorsed the findings of the Hazards report and are backing the TUC's calls for the HSE to rethink its approach to the scale of the occupational cancer problem in the UK. The experts believe that earlier findings that it is overwhelmingly someone's lifestyle, not their occupation that makes an individual more susceptible to cancer are wrong.

More importantly, say the experts, new evidence has since come to light - establishing for example the link between certain pesticides and cancer, and the link between passive smoking and cancer - which demands a new look at the issue.

'Burying the evidence' says that almost all the occupational cancer risk is being borne by less than a quarter (22 per cent) of the UK's workforce, the overwhelming majority of whom are manual workers. The report says that both the Government and employers are failing to take the dangers faced by these workers seriously. It also says that there is evidence that the numbers exposed to carcinogens at work could be increasing.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'Britain is facing a workplace cancer epidemic which is being largely hidden by official estimates. Much more could be done to prevent workers being needlessly exposed to potentially life-threatening chemicals and toxins, but a massive underestimation of the problem is jeopardising people's lives.

'Six thousand deaths a year from occupational cancers is terrible enough, but the tragedy is that the real death toll is much, much higher. Every day workers are being exposed to harmful substances such as formaldehyde and nickel that could be responsible for tomorrow's cancers.'

Editor of Hazards, Rory O'Neill said: 'The UK's complacent occupational cancer estimates are cribbed from one dangerously flawed and now discredited US study which deliberately excluded most workplace cancers and which 25 years ago was greeted with undisguised glee by the most polluting, toxic industries.

'The result is no UK prevention strategy worth the name and thousands of new cases of occupational cancers each year which could and should have been prevented by simple workplace measures, for example, the introduction of safer workplace substances and processes. Occupational cancer is a public health calamity which needs to become a major prevention priority.'

'Burying the evidence' contains a number of recommendations for action:

• the Government should come up with the resources to fund a major national occupational cancer prevention and awareness-raising campaign
• the out-of-date occupational cancer estimates held by the HSE must be revised immediately and more resources allocated to allow an increase in the number of workplace safety inspections
• the use of the most dangerous, cancer-causing chemicals should be phased out and companies should be forced to investigate the use of safer alternatives
• a national system of occupational health records should be introduced which could move with an individual throughout their working life. Also employers should be made to tell employees of the risks they face when working with certain substances.

'Burying the evidence' also contains a number of case studies of workers who have already died or who are seriously ill as a result of exposure to carcinogens at work:

• Keith McFadzien Jones was 15 when he was taken on by a joinery offshoot of Sheffield building firm Gleesons. In February 2005 he was told, aged 50, that those exposures in his youth when he was an apprentice joiner had given him mesothelioma, an asbestos cancer few survive for more than two years. 'Asbestos board was everywhere, it was cheap. We were never warned about asbestos risks. We'd cut it, then eat our lunch at the same spot.' Keith worked periodically - sometimes for a few days, then maybe not for months - with asbestolux, an asbestos board with a relatively high asbestos content. 'We made it into firedoors and other panels. The foreman said it was asbestos-free and the company gave us no warnings. We were working quite willy-nilly with asbestolux. Being told it was asbestos-free made things worse, it was an open invitation.' Keith left the firm aged 21, a qualified joiner, and believes that was the last time he worked with asbestos. By then, though, the damage was done. He first experienced symptoms, a shortness of breath and 'a pain like I'd been punched in the back' in September 2004, and has not been able to work since November 2004. Keith has had chemo and radiotherapy and is taking 24 different tablets a day, including morphine-based painkillers. Keith says: 'I want to live as long as I can. When I was diagnosed I was devastated, brokenhearted, but because of my family I have pulled myself together.' He now receives a disability pension but his wife, who is Russian and who has to care for him, receives nothing.
• Colin Dyal worked for over 30 years for Goodyear in the West Midlands. As an instrument technician, most of his working life was spent in the boiler house, providing power to the large tyre plant. He developed a pain in his left shoulder in his early 50s, but put it down to rheumatism. A physio was worried that the shoulder was not improving despite no apparent injury, and told him to see a doctor. Colin was first told he could have mesothelioma in May 2002, and the diagnosis was confirmed in August that year. He was 56. He won an out-of-court compensation settlement from the company. According to Colin, the boiler house was full of asbestos, layered on the boilers and on the miles of 18 inch pipes running throughout the plant. 'It's pretty much the same now as it was in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s they started a removal programme, but there was so much and removal was expensive so this faded away. Around this time the firm also sent us for regular x-rays, but this also stopped after a while. They did start giving us masks and proper overalls in the late 1980s, but they never said why they were needed. I didn't realise asbestos was dangerous because I'd been around it all my life. No-one ever told us the risks we were facing. Now I'm very angry. At the time I knew nothing about the risks, didn't even think about it.' Colin has copies of safety committee minutes recording the problem. 'If it was something to do with tyres, they'd get it fixed, anything else, nothing, it would be postponed to the next meeting.' Colin was originally included in a trial for a new chemo treatment, Alimta, which has been shown in studies to show the progress of mesothelioma, and which seemed to offer some improvement in his own health. 'For six months I felt brilliant'. But when the trial finished he was told his health authority in Shropshire would not provide the drug on the NHS. He now pays for his treatment, which costs thousands of pounds a time. 'You have to fight for Alimta, you have to fight for hospital beds for biopsies and you have to fight for appointments.' He'd had breathlessness and pain since his diagnosis, but had managed to maintain some of his pastimes. Six months ago, though, at the age of 59, the symptoms started to get much worse and he had to give up 'just about everything. 'Now when I climb the stairs to go to bed, I have to sit down for five minutes to get my breath before I can lie down. I have problems walking any sort of distance. I don't want to sit in front of the fire in a dressing gown waiting for it to happen. I want to try and keep some normality.'
• Helen Clark, who fought high tech hazards on her doorstep and won acclaim worldwide, died in June 2004. Helen was chair of Phase Two, the campaign group for those fighting hazards and ill-health caused by the microchip industry in Scotland's Silicon Glen. She suspected the cancer that was to kill her was, like other cases known to the group, related to exposures at the Greenock National Semiconductor plant where she worked. Investigations of high tech cancer, reproductive and other health risks in UK microelectronic plants only took place after concerted Phase Two pressure. The 2001 HSE study found higher than expected levels of four cancers - lung, stomach and breast cancers in female employees, and brain cancers in males. HSE said the results were 'inconclusive' and that more research was needed. The findings were criticised as flawed and an under-estimate by campaigners and their advisers. Under pressure, HSE agreed to undertake another study.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

- Keith and Colin are available for interview, as are some of the friends and relatives of people who have died from occupational cancers. Contact the press office for more information.

- The full Hazards article can be found at www.hazards.org/cancer

- The Winter 2005 issue of Hazards is out now. For subscription inquiries or orders contact Jawad Qasrawi on 0114 201 4265 or email sub@hazards.org

- The research upon which current HSE occupational cancer estimates are based is the 1981 Doll/Peto study. Hazards' analysis found it systematically excluded cancers affecting thousands of workers in hundreds of jobs, producing a lower annual estimate which in the UK is exceeded by asbestos cancers alone. The study included only cancers in people of working age - where most cancers only strike people over 65 - and missed most jobs employing women and excluded entirely breast cancer, the most common cancer in women. In just looking at deaths rather than cases of cancer, the HSE-preferred study also ignored the impact of the more curable cancers like kidney cancer.

- The findings and recommendations of 'Burying the Evidence' have been endorsed by top occupational cancer experts from both sides of the Atlantic, including:

Professor Andy Watterson, professor of occupational and environmental health, Stirling University, UK 07966 161401/01786 466283

Dr Jim Brophy, Stirling University/Director, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers, Canada. Authority on occupational cancer; co-author of 'Workplace routlette: Gambling with cancer'. 00 1 519 337 4267/00 1 519 331 7558.

Dr Richard Clapp, Professor of Environmental Health, University of Boston Medical School, USA: 00 1 617 638 4731

Dr Samuel Epstein. Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition ; Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, USA: 00 1 312 996 2297

Dr Lorenzo Tomatis, former head of the chemical evaluations unit, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; President of the International Scientific Committee, International Society of Doctors for the Environment, Italy. 00 39 40 200284.

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Contacts:

Media enquiries: Liz Chinchen T: 020 7467 1248; M: 07778 158175; E: media@tuc.org.uk

Press release (2,200 words) issued 25 Nov 2005