Module 3: Toxicology - Section 13: Occupational Carcinogenesis

TOX 13.8: Epidemiological Issues in Occupational Cancers

PREVENTION OF OCCUPATIONAL CANCER:

Preventive activities mainly rely on reduction or elimination of exposures as medical screening has a very limited preventive effect.  This is a familiar truth for many occupational diseases.

Surveillance

This depends on the availability of data for registration of cancer incidence or mortality from cancer.  Unfortunately in South Africa there is no nationwide coverage for either of these cancer related events.   There is a National Cancer Registry with some attempt to set up Provincial registries but data coverage is patchy.   Theoretically if good occupation data for subjects is available with good registration of incidence or good quality  mortality data it is possible to conduct surveillance by occupation.   This is difficult in South Africa for many reasons.

Screening

Screening for cancer in exposed populations for early diagnosis is not common and not of much use as in cases such as asbestos related lung cancer there is not much that can be done by knowing earlier that the patient has cancer.  More generally there is no justification for routine screening.

Postgraduate Diploma in Occupational Health (DOH) - Modules 3: Occupational Medicine & Toxicology (Basic) by Profs Mohamed Jeebhay and Rodney Ehrlich, Health Sciences UCT is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License. Major contributors: Mohamed Jeebhay, Rodney Ehrlich, Jonny Myers, Leslie London, Sophie Kisting, Rajen Naidoo, Saloshni Naidoo. Source available from here. For any updates to the material, or more permissions beyond the scope of this license, please email healthoer@uct.ac.za or visit www.healthedu.uct.ac.za. Last updated Jan 2007.
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