Follow-up investigation into cancer at National Semiconductor (UK) Ltd

The South Glasgow and Inverclyde Research Ethics Committee has now granted approval of the updated protocol [610KB]including study documentation such as questionnaires, letters of invitation to participate etc. The Institute of Occupational Medicine has completed the historical hygiene assessment of the plant that lead to the development of the job history questionnaire (and associated job exposure matrix). We will now start the next stage of the study - interviewing cases and controls (at the end of 2007 and anticipate that the study will report around the middle of 2008.

Project to update the estimate of the number of cancers attributable to occupational causes

An important estimate of the overall proportion of cancer attributable to occupational causes remains that put forward by Doll and Peto in 1981 in a report to the US Congress. They estimated that 4% (plausible range of uncertainty 2% to 8%) of cancer mortality was due to occupational causes. This equates to approximately 6 000 cancer deaths per year in Great Britain (plausible range 3 000 to 12 000) or 12,000 registered incident cancers (uncertainty range 6,000 to 24,000). It should be noted that the estimate includes asbestos related lung cancer and mesothelioma. Although, this estimate relates to the US over two decades ago, it remains the best overall estimate available. It is acknowledged, however, that this estimate may now be out-of-date. Consequently work is currently under contract to update and refine the estimate. The proceedings of a workshop to discuss the methodology and data requirements [240kb] for this work have been published. The Initial findings of this work are expected to be available towards the end of 2006.