Reprint with permission from Workers Health and Safety Centre

Groundbreaking Canadian Cancer Prevention Report Release 

Health and safety activists are praising recommendations from a recently released report aimed at preventing occupational and environmental carcinogens. The Report, Prevention of Occupational and Environmental Cancers in Canada: A Best Practices Review and Recommendation, was approved for circulation by the Governing Council of the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control (CSCC) in May. 

Since 1999 the Council, reporting to Health Canada (now to the Public Health Agency of Canada) has worked with provincial cancer agencies, the Canadian Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute of Canada and other stakeholders to develop an integrated national approach to fight cancer. 

This latest Report is the work of the National Committee on Environmental and Occupational Exposures, a tripartite multi-stakeholder sub-committee of the CSCC s Primary Prevention Action Group. The Committee reviewed Canadian, American and European best practices in the primary prevention of exposures to occupational and environmental carcinogens. The Committee used lists of confirmed and probable carcinogens classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. 

Larry Stoffman, director of health and safety for the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1518, chairs the Committee. The Report clearly identifies gaps in the system says Stoffman, By law Canadians have a right to know about toxins they re exposed to at work. In practice however, this right isn t respected. Canadians have even less protection against carcinogens they re exposed to in the community. 

The Report recommendations fall into seven priority areas: surveillance; information disclosure and labeling; community education and action; worker education and action; the role of non-governmental organizations in cancer prevention; the role of employer/industry in reducing carcinogens; and government intervention through legislation, regulation and public policy. In the short term says Stoffman the Committee will communicate the Report more widely before taking steps to implement its recommendations. 

Despite jurisdictional barriers to setting up national standards and best practices, Stoffman is hopeful about implementing mandatory substitution laws and establishing a national registry for workplace carcinogens. There are excellent lessons to be learned he says from grassroots coalitions who successfully lobbied for municipal pesticide bans. 

According to the CSCC the incidence of cancer in Canada will increase as much as 60 per cent over the next 20 years. Yet, scientists believe at least 50 per cent of cancer can be prevented. Since Canada is one of the few industrialized countries without a national cancer prevention strategy hopes are high this Report will provide the groundwork for one. 

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