The International Labour Organisation estimated that, by 1999, 34% of cancers would be work-related, as would 25% of injuries, 21% of chronic respiratory disease, and 15% of cardiovascular disease. Back in 1968 the UK’s GMB Union tried to organise a series of cancer prevention seminars but could not find one British scientist of stature willing to speak. Today the price of their silence is evident. Cancer clusters map well with the industries that cause them:

• Shipbuilding and asbestos factories mark hotspot areas for the asbestos cancer mesothelioma, e.g. Glasgow, Tyneside and Portsmouth

• PVC factories mark areas with high levels of the liver cancer angio-sarcoma

• The lung cancer oats cell carcinoma marks those factories where workers were exposed to bis-chloro-methyl ether, a potent carcinogen

• Nasal cancers pinpoint exposures in leather and cabinet-making centres

Global safety agencies are calling for “ethically correct and economically sound” measures to avert a costly epidemic of occupational disease in the 21st century.