Occupational cancer in Romania
Estimate of occupational cancer rate
Currently, the best estimate of the proportion of cancer deaths due to occupational exposures over the last few decades is 4%, with an associated uncertainty range of 2% to 8%, based on an estimate by Doll and Peto in 1981 in a report to the US Congress, which is nowadays also used by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) of Great Britain (source).
Situation in Romania
A WHO document indicates that occupational carcinogens cause 0.4% of the cancer cases in Romania, which is 10 times less than the internationally acknowledged estimate of 4% (source).
Given the average incidence of 50,000 new cancer cases per year (source, Romania’s National Institute of Statistics), the 4% estimate points out to about 2,000 of them to be caused by occupational factors, while the 0,4% estimate refers only to 200 such cases.
Do you know how many occupational cancer cases were officially registered in Romania last year (2006)? Only 3 !
France’s example is very telling: for its population 3 times more numerous than Romania’s, there were 371 registered occupational cancer cases in 1995 and 1925 such cases in 1995.
So, what happened to the rest of the cases? Why were they not reported and registered?
There is only one possible explanation, as highlighted by the PHARE occupational medicine expert Herman Spaanjard, who helped conduct a national study in Romania during 2005-2006: „Romanians are genetically resistent to occupational diseases” ! 