Graphic Communicator photo by Susan Zachem

Dan Huziak, Toronto 100M health and safety coordinator, leads a workshop on cancer prevention at the Joint Canadian Conference.

Worker activism and education are the keys to eliminating the threat of cancer and other diseases in the workplace, Toronto 100M Health and Safety Coordinator Dan Huziak advised workshop participants at the Joint Canadian Conference.

Huziak cited international scientific agreement that at least 80 percent of all cancers are related to environmental and workplace exposures to cancer-causing substances. These cancers are preventable by eliminating the exposures, he said.

Workers who want to leave it to their governments and employers to protect them from job-related diseases are making a mistake, Huziak said. He cited an occupational disease study program that was funded by the Ontario government in 1986 only to be slashed by Ontario Premier Mike Harris' Tory government in the early 1990s. "Don't think for one minute that any government is your friend," Huziak said.

Noting that business has lobbied hard in Ontario to take away the important basic right of workers to refuse unsafe work, Huziak urged GCIU local leaders and bargaining committees to insure this right in their contracts. "Volunteerism doesn't work when it comes to employers," he said.

Huziak also urged union members not to be persuaded by corporate-funded propaganda that all cancers are the fault of individuals through "lifestyle" choices, such as tobacco use or genetic factors. While such factors do play a role in disease, he said, they are not the only culprits despite their predominance in the media.

For example, Huziak said, the Windsor Occupational Information Service notes in its book, "Workplace Roulette, Gambling With Cancer," that the International Agency for the Research of Cancer has identified 24 substances that cause lung cancer in humans. Twenty-three of those substances were identified by the excess deaths of workers who were overexposed to those substances. The twenty-fourth substance is tobacco.

Finding out about possible disease-causing substances in the workplace often requires research, and Huziak provided workshop participants with lists of resource centers and websites to assist them in their searches.

After the information is obtained, Huziak said, it needs to be shared with co-workers and other groups. "We need to continue to educate people on the issues," he said.

Huziak said occupational health and safety information also needs to reach a wider audience. He cited a new program in Ontario that sends health and safety experts into schools to spread the word about occupational and environmental hazards.