Cancers, cardiovascular, cognitive pathologies… ANSES recommends studying the recognition of “forty diseases with a proven or probable link with occupational exposure.”
- According to ANSES, the tables used for the recognition of occupational diseases are obsolete in relation to scientific knowledge and current medical practices.
- During its assessment, the health authority identified “around forty diseases having a proven or probable link with occupational exposure not covered by an occupational disease table”.
- It therefore calls for updating the existing tables and proposes several areas for improvement for the designation of the disease, the treatment times and the work likely to cause the pathologies.
To benefit from automatic recognition of your occupational disease, you must meet all of the administrative conditions defined in the table, “annexed to the Social Security Code and the Rural and Maritime Fishing Code”corresponding to this one. Clearly, the patient does not have to provide proof of the link between his pathology and his professional activity because this link is presumed. “However, the evolution of scientific and medical knowledge has made a certain number of existing tables obsolete”, signals the National Agency for Safety, Health, Food, Environment and Work (ANSES). Indeed, the Commission, responsible for assessing the real cost of under-declaration of work accidents and occupational illnesses, noted that employees who were victims of compensable illnesses were unable to have them recognized as occupational illnesses.
“Around forty diseases having a proven or probable link with occupational exposure”
In this context, Anses was contacted by the General Directorate of Labor, the Directorate of Social Security and the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Agriculture so that it could determine, based on scientific elements, whether a updating of tables is necessary. Result : “around forty diseases having a proven or probable link with occupational exposure not covered by an occupational disease table” was identified. Among the pathologies detected, we find “cancers affecting different organs as well as non-cancerous diseases, such as cardiovascular disorders, psychological and cognitive illnesses or even respiratory pathologies such as asthma.”
Update occupational disease tables
Faced with these data, the agency recommends updating the tables of occupational diseases which list the administrative conditions allowing one to benefit from automatic recognition. More precisely, for the designation of the disease, the latter recommends no longer detailing the diagnostic methods and only indicating the name of the disease, “accompanied, where applicable, by the formulation confirmed by the examinations recommended by learned societies or the High Authority of Health at the time of diagnosis”.
With regard to treatment times, the health authority advises harmonizing them and adapting them to the terms of medical treatment for treatment purposes as well as to the times for the onset of illnesses. Another recommendation: set a treatment period of 50 years for all solid cancers, that is to say excluding blood cell cancers.
Finally, ANSES requests that the lists of work likely to cause diseases are no longer restrictive but indicative. She also recommends exploring the issues of “poly-exposure” in the professional environment and interactions between exposures causing multifactorial diseases such as cancers and degenerative diseases.
