Campaigners debate how to tackle workplace cancer

Hazards activists and researchers used a conference in Stirling in Scotland at the end of April to step up the campaign on occupational cancers.

The conference provided an opportunity to discuss plans on how to tackle workplace cancers and make more material available on the scale of the problem across Europe.

Papers and presentations from the event are now available, which safety reps can use to make the case for action in their workplaces.

Highlights included a presentatino from Hazards magazine editor, Rory O’Neill, which combined important facts and figures with policy demands — together with some useful cartoons to lampoon the HSE and other bodies dragging their feet on the issue. Other notable presentation available are those from US academic Richard Clapp, who estimates work cancers account for 3-4 times the current estimates and John McClean from the GMB general union.

The Stirling conference was in stark contrast to a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) workshop earlier this month. Although the HSE recognises that its old estimate of 6,000 deaths a year from occupational cancers is too low, it does not have a strategy based on substitution and on stricter enforcement that can drive down the number of deaths in future.

The papers from the Stirling conference are available at: www.nm.stir.ac.uk/research/oecp-presentations.php