GROWING PROBLEM Pesticides might make your garden grow, but they also do the same for childhood and occupational tumours.

A ‘dramatic’ increase in a range of occupational and childhood cancers has been linked to pesticide exposures.

Public health researchers, writing in a new report for the Chemicals, Health and Environment Monitoring Trust (CHEM Trust), call on the UK government to step up action to ban the most harmful pesticides and to bring in a duty for the public to be informed before spraying takes place.

They add that safer alternatives are available and are preferable to attempting to avoid occupational or environmental exposures to inherently dangerous substances.

‘A review of the role pesticides play in some cancers: Children, farmers and pesticide users at risk?’, published on 2 July 2010, links exposure prior to conception or during pregnancy to higher rates of childhood cancer and warns that farm workers could also be developing cancers caused by pesticide exposures at work.

The report says several studies “strongly suggest” that pesticide exposures are associated with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), leukaemia, prostate cancer and other hormone-related cancers. It adds that environmental factors “must be partly to blame” for massive increases in the incidence of certain cancers since 1975 – because genes in a population do not change that quickly.

Since the mid-1970s, cases of NHL have more than doubled in Britain, prostate cancer has tripled, testicular cancer has doubled and breast cancer in women has increased by two-thirds, and in men has quadrupled, the report notes. In the 35 years up to 1998, childhood cancer in Britain increased by 35 per cent, it adds. Although the increasing numbers may be in part a result of better diagnosis, the report authors believe environmental factors, including pesticides, are a contributory factor.

Stirling University’s Professor Andrew Watterson, a co-author of the report, commented: “Occupational and environmental cancers have been a neglected public health issue in the UK for decades. The report highlights the substantial nature of the threat from pesticide exposure.

“In the UK, oversight of pesticides has continued to err on the side of products rather than people and of course relies on data generated initially by the pesticide manufacturers. The regulatory response has usually been ‘if in doubt, do continue using pesticides’ when the scientific literature is littered with examples of products that have been cleared in the past emerging as known or suspect human carcinogens.

“There is a long-overdue and urgent need to mount a cancer prevention campaign on pesticides based on effective precautionary principles.”

Gwynne Lyons, director of CHEM Trust and co-author of the report, commented: “Research suggests that pregnant women, in particular, should avoid direct exposure to pesticides, if possible.”

She accused the UK of dragging its feet on risks posed by chemicals. “It is high time that the UK was more supportive of EU proposals to take a tougher approach to reducing exposure to potentially harmful chemicals,” she said. “If the UK is to shed its image of being the laggard in the EU, then the UK government must robustly implement the new EU pesticides legislation in order to try and reduce the burden of cancer in children, farmers and others exposed to pesticides.”

Professor Watterson said it was not realistic to expect the public to avoid farms and other areas where pesticides may be used. Instead, he said, the government needed to strengthen regulation to remove the risks in the first place. “There are substitutes available,” he said. “There are less hazardous alternatives.”

MATRIX RECYCLED This UK e-waste recycling giant recirculated mercury through the workplace via a defective ventilation system, resulting in gross exposures to the workforce.

One of the UK’s largest recycling firms and its director have been fined a total of £145,000 for “shocking” safety breaches that exposed workers to mercury fumes.

Twenty employees of Electrical Waste Recycling Group Ltd (EWR), formerly known as Matrix Direct Recycling Ltd, had levels of mercury in their system above UK guidance levels at the site in Huddersfield, and five of them showed extremely high levels following the exposure in the 10 months between October 2007 and August 2008.

Several workers had reported ill health as a result, including a pregnant worker who was concerned her unborn baby was at risk.

The firm recycles electrical equipment including fluorescent light tubes containing mercury and TV sets and monitors containing lead.

Bradford Crown Court heard that ventilation problems at the plant meant employees were being exposed to potentially harmful emissions from both substances. Mercury vapour was released when the lighting tubes were crushed. Because carbon filters were not fitted on the purpose-designed machine, the contaminated air was itself recycled and pumped back into the premises. One of the ducts pumped contaminated air directly into the office area.

The firm is involved in litigation with the American suppliers of the processing equipment over the missing carbon filters which would have stopped any mercury emissions, the court was told.

On 5 February 2010, EWR was fined £140,000 and ordered to pay £35,127 costs after pleading guilty to criminal safety breaches, including three separate breaches of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, and one breach of the Control of Lead at Work Regulations 2002. 

Company director Craig Thompson, 38, was also fined £5,000 after pleading guilty to a criminal breach of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. The judge decided not to disqualify Thompson from being a director. The court was told he had financial difficulties, including debts of £80,000.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the UK government’s workplace safety enforcement agency, issued the company five Improvement Notices and one Prohibition Notice – putting an immediate stop to work -  in relation to the incident. Although the company’s own daily tests identified high levels of mercury at the premises, the closure of an oven used to dispose of the chemical failed to solve the problem and by August 2008 HSE had issued the prohibition and improvement notices against the company.

Prior to the prohibition notice, HSE staff had tested the urine of 35 employees at the premises and found 20 had higher than recommended levels of mercury.

Barrister Robert Smith QC, for the companies, said since the prohibition notice was served the firm had spent £350,000 installing an effective emission filter system and a further £281,000-a-year was being spent on additional managers and supervisors. He told the court tests on staff conducted in January 2010 showed all were under the recommended levels.

After the hearing HSE inspector Jeanne Morton said: “This is a shocking case involving a large number of employees, many of them young and vulnerable, who were suddenly faced with the worrying possibility of damage to their long-term health. The risks associated with handling toxic substances like mercury have been known for generations, so it is all the more unacceptable that something like this has happened. The company failed to see the risks created by their recycling work and failed to develop effective plans for safe working. They also did nothing to check their workers’ health after exposure.

“Workers have a right to expect a reasonable level of protection in the workplace, and employers have a legal duty to provide it.”

Max Folkett, site inspector for the Environment Agency, added: “We have worked closely with HSE and other organisations during the investigation which led to this prosecution. Electrical Waste Recycling Group Limited requires an environmental permit from us for the recovery and processing of hazardous waste and we routinely inspect the site to check the company is complying with the permit. We suspended the permit following this incident in August 2008, removing the risk of mercury escaping from the site, because of our concerns the operation posed a serious risk of pollution from mercury.”

Toxic metals use, far from declining, appears to be staging a comeback. Lead use has increased dramatically in recent years. And increased production of electronic equipment worldwide is set to see the use of lead soar over the next decade.

The long term downward trend in mercury production stalled in 2006 and 2007. Latest figures, published in the 2009 edition of the authoritative World Mineral Production, show 1.4 million kilograms were produced in each of these years, a figure the report suggests is an underestimate.

The National Labor College (NLC) and the AFL-CIO’s Center for Green Jobs have launched a monthly online Green Labor Journal to outline issues of sustainability, energy use and climate change from a union perspective.

It says the journal will showcase union green initiatives and provide up-to-date information on new developments in green policy, technology and work processes.

A report in the AFL-CIO’s blog says the journal will emphasise that green jobs must pay decent wages and benefits so workers can sustain themselves and their families. All green policy initiatives also must include fair labour standards.

The online journal also will highlight the important role of unions in environmental debates.

Issue 1 includes details of NLC’s Green Workplace Representative Certificate Program. It says: “Based upon the model of the British Trade Union Congress’s (TUC) Union Green Representative program, the NLC curriculum will provide working people with a practical guide for conducting a workplace audit, organizing a ‘greening committee’ in every workplace, and working with management to make the positive changes necessary to achieve sustainability.”

TUC publishes a regular online Green Workplaces News.

Writing in the first issue of the Green Labor Journal, NLC’s Tom Kriger notes: “Research shows that sustainable workplaces are more productive workplaces.  Thus a further goal of this program is to build cooperative labor-management partnerships so workplaces become safer and more productive, enhance the competitiveness of American firms in the global economy, and contribute to the health of the planet. 

“Based in part upon the role of the health and safety committees that the labor movement pioneered in many workplaces, a workplace “greening committee” would provide the appropriate forum for discussing the results of workplace audits and negotiating steps to address issues identified in the audits.”

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the UK government’s workplace health and safety watchdog, says it has “identified that a contributing factor may be that some local authorities are unclear what their legal duties are and mistakenly believe that putting a service out to contract relieves them of all health and safety responsibilities.”

HSE says it hopes new online guidance will help local authorities understand the importance of a sensible approach to health and safety when it comes to procuring and managing waste and recycling services, in a bid to help reduce death and injury. According to HSE figures, the recycling industry has nine times more fatalities than the national average and four times as many workers suffer injuries.

HSE chair Judith Hackitt said: “The guidance will help local authorities understand the full extent of their role when managing waste and recycling contractors. HSE wants to see occupational health and safety become an integral but common sense part of the specification, procurement and management of waste and recycling contracts.”

HSE research has also found workers in the waste and recycling sector have higher sickness rates.

FOUR FINGERS Plastics recycling worker Wesley Dickinson lost four fingers as a result of the negligence of his employer. The firm received a small fine.

A UK plastics recycling company has been fined £2,500 after a worker had four of his fingers severed.

Wesley Dickinson, 22, was trying to remove a guillotine jam at Centriforce Products Ltd in Liverpool when his fingers became trapped. Doctors reattached two of his fingers, but they have limited movement.

The company, which admitted breaching safety regulations, said it regretted the accident in May 2008. Centriforce was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after the incident and was fined £2,500 this month by Liverpool magistrates and ordered to pay £2,438 in costs.

HSE inspector Martin Paren said: “This incident has had a devastating impact on Mr Dickinson, who is only in his early 20s. He cannot return to his old job and will not be able to do manual work in the foreseeable future, due to the limited strength and movement in his right hand.”

He added: “The company should have had a guard on the guillotine to prevent workers from reaching the blade. An automatic mechanism should also have been in place so that the power was cut if the guard was opened. Instead Mr Dickinson wrongly assumed that a colleague had switched the guillotine off, and he had four fingers cut off as a result.”

In its response to the findings of an official consultation into the UK’s ‘Carbon Reduction Commitment’, the government has said the assessment of good practice on “disclosure of information on energy management” should include consideration of measures to “actively engage employees to reduce energy use.”

The government’s policy decisions document notes: “Where an independent trade union is recognised for collective bargaining purposes, energy management issues are considered in these joint discussions and members actively take forward initiatives to reduce the organisation’s carbon emissions.”

A report on the Touchstone blog on the UK national union federation TUC notes “carbon pricing kicks off in April 2010 for 5,000 of our largest service sector employers, when the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), takes effect.”

It adds CRC will put a price on carbon dioxide pollution in the service industries, with incentives to cut consumption.

The TUC blog adds: “It’s great news for the TUC and our affiliates and reflects well on the hard work and dedication of green reps. Their work will now be recognised in a CRC performance ‘league table’, which requires employers to tick an ‘employee engagement” box’…”

The TUC entry adds: “As the TUC’s latest study of 1,300 green reps points out, unions are now the real green champions in the workplace!”

The same day the Conservatives said their new Green Deal to create a low carbon economy would create more than 70,000 skilled jobs.

The shadow energy and climate change secretary, Greg Clark said he hoped 3,500 of the new jobs created through the programme could be ‘green apprenticeships’.

• TUC greenworkplaces webpages.

It says its Emerging Energy Technologies (EET) Programme, which includes new online resources, is HSE’s attempt to address the health and safety implications of the government’s drive “to tackle climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions” and to “ensure secure, clean and affordable energy in the face of increasingly uncertain supply”.  

The safety watchdog says EET’s key objectives are to support the government strategy, provide guidance “that enables the safe introduction and expansion of new energy technologies”, to “enforce the law to minimise risks to all those affected by new activities,” and to “maintain a regulatory framework that is effective, coherent and pertinent.”

It says the programme’s “work streams” include carbon capture and storage, natural gas storage and LNG imports, renewable energy, distributed generation and cleaner coal technology.

However, the UK government’s safety watchdog appears to be accepting the introduction of inherently hazardous technologies of dubious worth – carbon capture, for example – rather than nixing the unhealthy approaches at the outset.

 HSE Emerging Energy Technologies (EET) Programme.