Long ago I heard of what I presumed was an apocryphal statistic that chemists are more likely to die of cancer but that's simply because they live longer than other professions and, of course, the longer you live the more likely you are to get cancer. Pete inspired me to waste my Friday afternoon productivity to do some web searching.
The original article stated "Nearly half the excess cancer deaths were attributed to malignant lymphoma and carcinoma of the pancreas".
Found this Swedish study of laboratory workers between 1950 and 1989
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1008892830922 They found "The findings support earlier observations of an increased risk of hematolymphatic cancer among laboratory workers. The routine for handling chemicals and functionality of ventilatory equipment must be under continuous supervision."
=E2=88™ILO estimates 666,000 deaths that are caused by occupational cancer globally every year, double of that for occupational accidents;
=E2=88™In the EU28 102,500 deaths take place, twenty times of that caused by occupational accidents;
=E2=88™Biggest killer at work in High Income Countries (WHO Classification) including the EU, Japan and others;
=E2=88™Lung cancer counts for 54=E2=80"75% of occupational cancer. Occupational exposures cause 5.3-8.4% of all cancers, and among men 17-29% of all lung cancer deaths according to best estimates;
=E2=88™Asbestos counts for 55-85% of lung cancer, and causes other cancers and asbestos related diseases today, which could have been prevented in the past;
=E2=88™Cancer and occupational cancer mortality increases due to growing life expectancy and gradual reduction of other causes of death, such as communicable diseases and injuries, work exposures cause cancers that have high case mortality rate, such as lung cancer;
=E2=88™10 most important occupational carcinogens count for around 85% of all occupational deaths.
That last one is interesting. In fact if you look at the two earlier studies they come from what I'll call the Benzene Era. Benzene is well-understood to cause various lymphomas. And with respect to the NIOSH report that includes the Asbestos Era. I wonder what the stats would be if someone ran a study now looking at, say, 1985 to present. Pretty simply, really - survey ACS members, have them recall how many hours a week they typically were exposed to various substances in the lab/production and then the scientists at the EPA...oh, wait, right, never mind
Rob Toreki
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I'd like to add another point concerning scientists working in labs. In my conversations with scientists, the vast majority are unaware of this paucity of toxicity information. Further, they use and are potentially exposed to a much larger universe of research chemicals not used in commerce-and nearly all have no toxicity information. But they assume that if something is toxic, or related to a toxic chemical, it will be so labeled, or so indicated on the SDS. They aren't. (The SDS might say, "no data available.") In this case, the only safe use for most research chemicals is in the fume hood for volatile chemicals, or handled with gloves on the benchtop.
And in the real world, the fume hood is often too crowded so the work is done on the benchtop. If gloves are used, the likelihood of hand-to-face contact is nearly certain. (See Johnston, J.O., et al, The Influence of Risk Perception on Biosafety Level-2 Laboratory Workers' Hand-To-face Contact Behaviors. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, Vol. 11, pp 62S-632, September 2014 who observed that researchers handling pathogens touched their face with their gloved hand 2.6 times an hour.)
Epidemiologically, we are unlikely to discover occupational chemical toxicity because disease may take years to manifest and it can be attributed to many other factors.
I don't want to frighten scientists, but I don't see the appropriate degree of awareness if this problem and care in their handling of chemicals.
Pete Reinhardt, Yale EHS
Agreed, and the big issue for me is that under US law, those untested chemicals can be labeled (and ARE labeled) "nontoxic." The US law essentially makes chemicals innocent until proven guilty. For example, untested benzidine, anthraquinone, and other suspect-class pigments are used in art materials without chronic testing and are labeled "nontoxic." Some of these are in children's products.
There is something really wrong with us over here. The right to make money is superior to all other rights. We are content to wait until enough humans are killed or sickened to constitute absolute proof that a chemical is hazardous before we allow it to be restricted or to carry a warning label. We form groups to protect the lab rats and are content to take their place when we willingly expose ourselves to the untested chemicals.
Monona
Monona alluded to this, but this is important to me because it demonstrates how much we don't about the toxicity of the chemicals that we are regularly exposed to.
As of 2016, IARC listed 900 chemicals that have been tested for carcinogenicity..
I understand that the registry of toxic effects of chemical substances (RTECS) lists all the toxicity data publicly available. (Right?) As of 2016, it listed toxicity data for under 200,000 chemicals. Most of that data is acute lethal dose data. Relatively few chemicals have been thoroughly studied for neurotoxicity, nephrotoxity, hepatotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, etc.
I am not a chemophobe, but I do find it alarming that we know nearly nothing (or very little) about the possible toxic effects from chronic exposure to chemicals that we are exposed to every day--and that this is a relatively low public concern.
Pete Reinhardt, Yale EHS
-----Original Message-----
From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU] On Behalf Of DCHAS Membership Chair
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2020 8:13 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: [DCHAS-L] C&EN: Number of chemicals in commerce has been vastly underestimated
Last week, I posted information about work being conducted to develop a MINCHI standard to identify chemical mixtures reproducibly and unambiguously. There is an article in C&EN today that demonstrates the challenge of relying on less systematic approaches, such as CAS numbers. The researchers used in the CAS numbers as the identifier in this study and found that only about half of the chemicals and mixtures of chemicals registered for commercial production and use had CAS numbers that identified them.
More information can be found at:
https://nam05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcen.acs.org%2Fpolicy%2Fchemical-regulation%2FNumber-chemicals-commerce-vastly-underestimated%2F98%2Fi7&data=02%7C01%7Cpeter.reinhardt%40yale.edu%7C8a2c63e0474d483587d308d7b086b4ad%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C637171964919786627&sdata=cS%2FoAu9g37HMt3R64Bj6URaEpFlrxb%2BQ2GdQmO0nttY%3D&reserved=0
Number of chemicals in commerce has been vastly underestimated
Scientists assemble a first-ever global inventory listing triple the number of chemicals on the market as previous lists
For the first time, scientists have created a global inventory that lists more than 350,000 chemicals and mixtures of chemicals registered for commercial production and use, up to three times as many as is commonly estimated (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b06379).
BY THE NUMBERS
- 157,000: Individual chemicals identified by CAS numbers, according to the most comprehensive global inventory to date
- 75,000: Mixtures, polymers, and substances of unknown or variable composition identified by CAS numbers
- 120,000: Substances that could not be conclusively identified
Source: Environ. Sci. Technol. 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b06379
Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
membership**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org
Membership chair
American Chemical Society
Division of Chemical Health and Safety
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