As someone who writes about workplace safety, I feel like I spend a lot of time writing about workplace injuries and deaths from, say, explosions or falls but not much time focusing on occupational illnesses. The fact is that exposure in the workplace to certain chemicals and substances can cause a wide range of diseases, most notably cancer. And work-related illnesses are a serious problem. For example, occupational diseases make up the largest portion of Alberta’s workplace fatalities—accounting for more deaths every year than job-site incidents or vehicle crashes since 2002.

Safety organizations may be guilty of having the same narrow focus on injuries. But NIOSH, a partner of CCOHS, is trying to remedy that situation by working on cancer prevention efforts in the US manufacturing industry.

The NORA Paper

NIOSH is working through the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) in its cancer prevention efforts. NORA is a partnership program designed to stimulate innovative research and improve workplace practices. It encourages partners to collaborate to identify the most critical issues in workplace safety and health and then work together to develop ways to address those issues.

NORA recently released a paper, Work-Related Cancer, which outlines the goal of reducing the incidence and prevalence of cancer in the manufacturing sector. But to achieve this goal, the NORA partners need help. Suggestions include:

• Using the results of research studies to identify and track workplace hazards that have been linked to cancer
• Developing and distributing education materials about the use of engineering controls to reduce worksite exposure to carcinogens
• Developing business cases for adopting cancer prevention measures
• Conducting and promoting exposure assessment and hazard evaluations of known and suspected carcinogens
• Educating management and workers about known and suspected hazards for work-related cancer by distributing information about existing workplace hazards linked to cancer
• Adopting interventions shown to be effective to prevent workers from developing work-related cancer.

Canadian Cancer Prevention Efforts

Canadian groups have also recognized the need to pay more attention to occupational illnesses such as cancer. For example, the Occupational Cancer Prevention Strategy is a new initiative between Alberta Employment and Immigration and Alberta Health Services, co-sponsored by Alberta Health and Wellness. The strategy’s ultimate goal is to eliminate occupational cancers in Alberta. As steps towards this vision, the Minister’s Advisory Committee identified three goals:

• Work with key stakeholders to identify a list of priority cancer-causing agents by 2011
• Reduce exposure to these identified cancer-causing agents by 50% by 2015
• Establish an ongoing process to address identification and control of cancer-causing agents related to emerging technologies and research.

The strategy’s currently just a draft. Once it’s approved by the Minister, it’ll be posted on the website.