wildcardenvironmentalist Occupational Health, Uncategorized

Double trouble on relative risk for occupational diseases

A new report from Professor Andrew Watterson and Professor Rory O’Neill on the unjust state compensation schemes which means occupational diseases including breast cancer linked to shiftwork will never overcome an arbitrary double-the-risk qualification hurdle and call for reform of this ailing system.

How did this system get so unfair? Women almost miss out entirely. Breast cancer is the top occupational cancer for women directly linked to shift work yet it isn’t on the state prescribed disease list. Each year, according to HSE, around 2,000 women develop breast cancer as result of working shifts. Not one is compensated.The ACP and the Hazards Campaign drew attention to this ignoring of women’s breast cancer in particular when it staged a demo out a HSE meeting. We also maligned the HSE for making occupational breast cancer a much neglected gender issue.

The report makes the case for occupational cancer and exposes the fact that the UK is backwards on prevention and recognition of real-life, flesh and blood cases.

Read the report here.

wildcardenvironmentalist Cancer Plan, Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals

ACP submission to the Cancer Task Force

The ACP responded to NHS Englands announcement of a new independent taskforce to develop a five-year action plan for cancer services that will improve survival rates and save thousands of lives.

Although the focus seems to be primarily on services and treatment which we agree are vital – we need the highest possible standards of care – we were very disappointed not to see environmental and occupational risk factors addressed and actioned in any of the documents referenced for the strategy. Indeed in the report, Five Year Forward View, the emphasis appears to be only on lifestyle interventions.

Although CRUK have narrowed the new cancer strategy to service provision they did acknowledge that the task force is: “A great opportunity for the cancer community to lead development of a cross-system, independent and ambitious new cancer plan……..and addressing the preventable causes of cancer will be key to seeing progress.”

We believe that unless we tackle the primary prevention of cancer i.e. stopping cancer before it starts, we are unlikely to see any improvement in the cancer epidemic. There are many barriers to action on the primary prevention of cancer; cancer is also caused by lack of political will. In our view, the biggest barrier to addressing cancer services is the lack of action on primary prevention which necessitates greater resources into services in the first place.

We sincerley hope this is a great opportunity to include the environmental and occupational risk factors for cancer into new cancer plans…without addressing these confounding risk factors we can only look forward to a cancer forever future.

Our submission can be downloaded here Submission to Cancer Task Force

 

 

wildcardenvironmentalist Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals

Submission to EU Commission on the EDC consultation

Due to the intensive lobbying from the chemicals and pesticide industry the EU Commission missed its December 2013 deadline to set criteria for indentifying Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) – chemicals which are widely used, ubiquitous and harmful. The public consultation was launched in 2014 and closed on the 16/1/2015. Here is the ACP  submission to the EU EDC public consultation

The EDC Free Europe Coalition received 20,440 individual submissions onto its online platform Say No to Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals.

In total the EU Coommission received 27,087  responses – more information on the breakdown can be found here.

To follow and support this work please sign up to our campaign http://www.edc-free-europe.org/