One big problem faced by those who act to protect workers’ rights to health is the near-total social invisibility of occupational cancers. This is because in by far most cases, tumours only present after the worker has retired from working. This makes the link between the disease and past working conditions harder to establish.

A pilot scheme being run in France since 2005 is trying to put this right. The idea is to set up post-occupational monitoring for employees and self-employed skilled workers by identifying retired workers who had work-related exposures to carcinogens, plus providing medical follow-up.

Initial estimates published by France’s health protection agency are that half of retired self-employed skilled workers have had at least one exposure to asbestos during their working lives. These are the initial findings of an analysis of the 846 replies received to a self-administered questionnaire sent out to 1 247 retired self-employed skilled workers in the Aquitaine, Limousin and Poitou-Charentes regions.

A medical checkup was offered to 75% of those who responded to the questionnaire, but the medical data have not yet been processed.

The findings for employees are not yet available, as this strand of the project was only launched in April this year. The semi-finalized study findings should be known by spring 2007, however, after which the further roll-out of the scheme to national level and to other occupational carcinogens like wood dust will be considered.

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