date: 20 June 2006

embargo: For immediate release

Australian study backs TUC cancer claim

Research just published in Australia indicating that many more people there are dying as a result of cancer caused by their jobs than official estimates suggest, back a similar study into UK cancer deaths published by the TUC last year, the trade union organisation said today (Tuesday).

Last November, a report in the TUC-backed journal Hazards said that Britain was facing an occupational cancer epidemic that could be responsible for as many as 24,000 deaths a year, four times the figure (and the equivalent of 16 per cent of all cancer deaths in the UK) suggested by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The Hazards report, 'Burying the evidence', says that according to HSE figures, just four per cent of the UK's annual cancer death toll is as a result of exposure to carcinogens at work, which it says is equal to 6,000 deaths a year. But the article concludes that the incidence of occupational cancer in the UK is much higher at somewhere between 12,000 and 24,000 deaths a year.

The problem with the statistics currently used by the Australian and UK official safety bodies, says the TUC, is that both base their evidence on now essentially flawed US research conducted almost 25 years ago.

Research just published by the Queensland Cancer Fund and the University of Sydney says that every year some 5,000 Australian workers - twice the officially accepted best guess for occupational cancer prevalence - develop cancer as a result of coming into contact with carcinogens in their offices or factories. This has lead to calls for Australian health and safety laws to be tightened to give employees better protection at work.

Commenting on the Australian study, report author and head of epidemiology at the Queensland Cancer Fund, Lin Fritschi, said: 'A large study [the Doll-Peto study] in the 1980s suggested that just four per cent of cancers in the workplace were caused by occupation, and that's the figure still used in Australia. But that is a really big underestimate, because that data was from the 1950s and 60s. We now know a lot more about chemicals and cancer risk than we did 20 years ago.'

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'This latest piece of research shows that the UK must upwardly revise its estimates of the number of work-related cancer deaths. Until it does so, the UK will continue to severely underestimate the number of workers at risk, and workers will go on being exposed needlessly to life-threatening chemicals. We need far more to be done to prevent exposure.'

Hazards Editor Rory O'Neill said: 'Occupational cancer is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of exposure, so if we remove the carcinogens we remove the risk. A small, low cost public health intervention of this type could save tens of thousands of lives. With cancer, prevention has to be the priority because sadly there frequently isn't a cure.'

The original Hazards report made a number of recommendations for action and the publication of the Australian figures has prompted the TUC to renew its call for something to be done about the UK's workplace cancer epidemic:

• 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.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

- The full Hazards article published in November 2005 can be found at www.hazards.org/cancer

- For Hazards 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.

- At the time of publication last year, the findings and recommendations of 'Burying the Evidence' were endorsed by top occupational cancer experts from both sides of the Atlantic, including: Professor Andy Watterson, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health, Stirling University; Dr Jim Brophy, Stirling University/Director, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers, Canada; Dr Richard Clapp, Professor of Environmental Health, University of Boston Medical School, USA; Dr Samuel Epstein; and Dr Lorenzo Tomatis, former Head of the Chemical Evaluations Unit, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France.

Contacts: Media enquiries: Liz Chinchen T: 020 7467 1248; M: 07778 158175.

Press release (900 words) issued 20 Jun 2006