If cancers are the leading cause of death in France, the responsibility of work in their appearance is too little questioned. However, in cases of burn-out or musculoskeletal disorders, we no longer hesitate to ask for compensation. A step must be taken to do the same with cancers.
On January 28, a report from the Bouches-du-Rhône labor inspectorate, damning for the management of the ArcelorMittal plant in Fos-sur-Mer, was revealed by the Marsactu site. It describes a “proven dangerous situation for the workers”, who were seriously overexposed to a carcinogenic gas.
This is the first time that this type of report has been made public, and it highlights a bigger problem: the responsibility of work is too rarely implicated in the appearance of cancers among workers, as explained by this article from The Conversation France.
In France, 12% of workers exposed to cancer
It should be noted that the carcinogenic factors most frequently found in a work environment are diesel exhaust gases, whole mineral oils, wood dust and crystalline silica for humans.
For women, these are night work, ionizing radiation, formaldehyde (formalin) and cytostatic drugs used for chemotherapy. In the end, it is more than one employee in ten (precisely 12%) who is concerned.
Unsurprisingly, these are mainly workers. For example, it has been known for a long time that, among woodworkers, the risk of cancer of the nose and sinuses is 40 times higher (according to a study by the Arc, Association for Cancer Research).
Means too weak to protect employees
According to several studies carried out within the framework of theses in sociology, one at the University of Lorraine and the other at the University of Évry-Val-d’Essonne, the means granted to employees to protect themselves from the risk of known cancer in their work are insufficient.
These studies also highlight the fact that workers with cancer find it difficult to obtain compensation when there is suspicion that the work is responsible for the development of their disease. But why do we talk so little about the responsibility of work in cancers?
Responsibility for work
The studies call into question a “form of social acceptance of the evils of work”. Even doctors would hesitate to question the responsibility of the work in the illness of their patient, whereas it is up to them to write the medical certificate essential to the process of recognition. In addition, cancers, whatever their form, evolve for a long time without specific symptoms and the diagnosis is too often made late, this is the case for asbestos and lead.
Once detected, received ideas about cancer as well as these specificities mean that the employee does not always make the link between his illness and his job, or former job if the cancer took a long time to declare itself. This disease can be triggered by multiple factors, and unfortunately we will not necessarily suspect its professional space as much as tobacco or indoctrination disruptors.
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