EDITORIALS
The burden of occupational cancer
Correspondence to:
Kurt Straif, IARC, 150 Cours Albert Thomas, Lyon, France; straif@iarc.fr
Accepted 11 April 2008
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In this issue of the journal (see p 789), Rushton and colleagues1 report the first detailed estimate of the burden of occupational cancer in the UK. Estimates for all but leukaemia are greater than those currently used in the UK. During the last 25 years a variety of methods and assumptions have been employed to estimate the local, national and global burdens of occupational cancer resulting in attributable fractions ranging from less than 1% to about 40%.
In 1981, Doll and Peto2 estimated that about 4% of all cancer deaths and 12.5% of lung cancer deaths (15% in men) in the USA were attributable to occupational exposures. Lung cancer accounted for almost 70% of occupational cancers and at least 1%–2% of all cancer deaths were ascribed to asbestos (see Box 1). These estimates have been widely quoted although they were criticised for various methodological reasons, for example for
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Occup. Environ. Med. 2008 65: 789-800.[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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