On World Cancer Day, trade unions are warning that the European Commission’s reckless deregulation agenda will put workers at a higher risk of cancer.
The European Commission wants to make it easier for companies to use substances which are carcinogenic, mutagenic, or toxic for reproduction (CMR) in the production of cosmetics and fertilisers.
Factory workers, farmers, refuse collectors and hairdressers are among the workers who would be exposed to a higher risk of cancer if these plans go ahead.
100,000 deaths a year
With the European Parliament now considering its report on the Commission’s ‘Chemicals Omnibus’, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) calls on MEPs to put people’s lives before more profits for multinationals.
The proposal to weaken protections comes despite the fact that the Commission itself says that cancer is the leading cause of work-related deaths in the EU, with carcinogens contributing to an estimated 100 000 occupational cancer deaths in the workplace every year.
Meanwhile, the EU’s health and safety agency warned recently of workplace cancer that there are “significant gaps in prevention and an urgent need for targeted, evidence-based interventions to protect workers' health.”
ETUC Confederal Secretary Giulio Romani:
“The European Commission’s claim today to have a ‘firm commitment’ to tackling cancer is utterly shameless when they are actively trying to weaken laws protecting working people from cancer-causing substances.
“At a time when the Commission itself says 100,000 deaths a year are being caused by workplace cancer, people would expect it to be strengthening protections as the EU’s safety agency has called for.
“Nothing demonstrates more clearly that European laws need to be made in the public interest and not only in the interests of those who have the most money to spend on consultants and lobbyists in Brussels.
“What our chemical sector needs is a serious industrial strategy backed by increased public investment, not lower safety standards that put the lives of its own workforce at risk.”
