[Occupational exposure and bladder cancer]

Abstract

There is an important gap between the number of bladder cancer cases--over a 1000 per year--that are imputable, by epidemiologists'estimations, to occupational factors and the small number--fewer than 20--compensated as occupational diseases. This can be explained by the latency of the disease and by the fact that the chemicals mainly responsible for bladder cancer--aromatic amines compounds and, to a lesser extent, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons--are very complex and disseminated in a large variety of industrial settings. Besides the sectors historically known as involving this occupational risk--the dye and the rubber industries--new branches have been identified as hazardous: some sectors of plastic materials or aluminium industries, of laboratory research, the industrial gas production from coke ovens, foundries... The European policy for the prevention of occupational cancers has applied for over 10 years to carcinogenic aromatic amines. Screening for the early detection of vesical lesions is legally prescribed in France for workers that are or have been exposed to chemicals or processes potentially carcinogenic for the bladder.