Immediate action needed to prevent 'industrial manslaughter,' says expert

Dr. Jeanne Stellman tells presidential panel that many chemicals remain unregulated

Jeanne Mager Stellman, PhD, professor and chair of environmental and occupational health sciences at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, told the President's Cancer Panel that government policy and a "lack of the will to prevent occupational disease, death and disability" are responsible for the failure to control cancer-causing chemicals in the workplace. Meeting in East Brunswick, New Jersey on Sep 16, the panel heard Dr. Stellman say that decades have been wasted examining the problem of carcinogens while not doing enough to stem their threat to public health.

Dr. Stellman attributed the successful campaign to remove the threat of asbestos more to health advocates such as the late Irving Selikoff and trade unions rather than to government action. PCBs, on the other hand – while widely considered hazardous – are still a major threat to workers because few have championed efforts to control them and the government has not followed its own mandates to protect the public.

Dr. Stellman said, "While we as a society have been debating and delaying and have been occupying ourselves with setting up straw man arguments about incidence and attributable risk, more and more chemicals have been introduced into commerce and have remained largely unmonitored and unregulated."

Dr. Stellman told the panel that the time for discussion is past if we are to stop "ongoing industrial manslaughter."

The full text of Dr. Stellman's testimony follows:

"Delusions, Illusions and Ongoing Neglect of Hazard Recognition, Regulation and Control of Industrial Carcinogens"

A Presentation to the President's Cancer Panel
September 16, 2008
East Brunswick, New Jersey

Jeanne Mager Stellman, PhD
Professor & Chair, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
SUNY-Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn NY
Professor Emeritus, Mailman School of Public Health
Columbia University, New York, NY

In collaboration with

Steven D. Stellman, PhD MPH
Professor, Department of Epidemiology
Mailman School of Public Health
Columbia University

I wish to thank the President's Cancer Panel for this opportunity to address it on environmental cancers associated with industrial and manufacturing exposures. The Panel's day has been framed by a series of questions on the current state of governmental regulation, inspection, control and overall policy with regard to carcinogens; on resources allocated to recognition of cancer hazards, and on social and policy barriers to carrying out research and developing effective cancer control policy