BMJ  2007;334:925 (5 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.39202.548588.DB

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Occupational cancer kills more than 200 000 people a year

Kaushal Raj Pandey

BMJ

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

More than 200 000 people, most of them in the developed world, die each year from a workplace related cancer, the World Health Organization has said in a press release.

A major rise in the incidence of occupational cancer can be expected in developing countries in the coming decades as work processes involving the use of carcinogens shift to countries with less stringent enforcement of occupational health standards, WHO warns. These processes involve substances such as chrysotile asbestos and pesticides and those used in production of tyres and dyes.

The developed world presently has a higher rate of occupational cancer, the result of the wide use 20 to 30 years ago of various carcinogenic substances such as blue asbestos, 2-naphthylamine, and benzene, it adds. These countries now have much tighter controls on the presence of these known carcinogens in the workplace.

Asbestos, second hand smoke, and benzene are the carcinogens . . . [Full text of this article]


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