Occupational Causes

Moderate Building performs function. Building is not reusable following an explosion. Major repairs needed that equal or exceed replacement cost. Risk of some injury to some occupants caused by building damage. Ten to 90 days of downtime. 

Major Building severely damaged. High risk of severe injury to occupants caused by building damage. Downtime in excess of 90 days. 

Cardiovascular Effects. In a cohort mortality study of workers in a large rubber and tire manufacturing plant, Wilcosky and Tyroler (1983) found a significant increase in mortality from ischemic heart disease in phenol exposed workers. Of the 25 solvents used in the plant, phenol exposure showed the strongest association with mortality from heart disease, greater even than that observed for exposure to carbon disulfide, the only known occupational cause of atherosclerosis. 

Depression is an illness that maims and kills. It kills by suicide and it kills by making medical conditions worse or less responsive to treatment. It maims in the sense that it disables individuals socially and occupationally, causes somatic symptoms itself, and contributes to the development of medical conditions that are disabling. Suicide is a major complication of depression and by no means rare. Approximately one out of seven individuals with recurrent major depression will commit suicide. The large majority—about 70%—are suffering from major depression at the time of the act (Ezzell, 2003). 

It has been estimated that cancer deaths due to asbestos will peak at several thousand per year in the UK alone, and at over 10,000 per year in the USA over the thirty-year period from 1983. The deaths from mesothelioma alone in the UK are believed to number 1,800 and will not reach a peak for another ten years. It is the most common occupational cause of death in the UK Hence, while deaths from most other cancers are decreasing, deaths from asbestos-related cancer are increasing. 

Clapp RW, Howe GK, Jacobs M. Environmental and occupational causes of cancers revisited. J Pub Health Pollcy2006, 27 61-76. 

There are several hundred well-documented occupational causes of asthma... 

The present status of knowledge in this field is far from relevant, hence one can neither incriminate nor refute the occupational causative factors for childhood cancer and leukemias. The positive associations of occupations and exposures having a higher risk could be used only in setting priorities for further research. 

Epidemiological studies in relation to specific forms of ill-h th and tibdbr occupational causes... 

The approach of Doll and Peto (1981) to estimating the extent of mortality from cancer that is due to occupational causes has been the basis for several subsequent estimations, In one of the most recent of these, a study undertaken to inform the European Commission in its deliberations on current regulatory strategic on controlling hazardous chemicals, Postle et al (2003) estimate that 3.5 per cent of the total cancer mortality in the EU was associated witii occupational exposure to chemicals and the authors suggest that about 20 per cent of such morfedity may stem fiom exposure to currently unknown chemical carcinogens. 

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