Cancer in Coking Plant Workers

A review of death certificates, received in con nexion with a funeral benefit scheme, suggested to the officials of the National Union of Mineworkers that there seemed to be an unduly high proportion of deaths due to cancer among workers in coking plants. At the request of the National Joint Con sultative Council, a special study was made of the mortality experience of the industry. Its methods and results are reported below. Apart from an unpublished report by Sir Thomas Oliver in 1930, little has been written about the health of workers in the coking plants of this country; and Oliver's study is impressionistic rather than factual in its approach. Indeed it is usual for coke workers to be taken together with gas workers in the Registrar-General's account of occupational mortality. The basic processes in the production of metallurgical coke and of gas for industrial or domestic use are, of course, similar, and strong suggestions of an increased liability of gas workers to cancer of the skin and bladder (Henry, Kennaway, and Kennaway, 1931) and of the lung (Kennaway and Kennaway, 1947; Doll, 1952) are relevant to our problem. Thus we note that in Table 1 skilled gas workers had, at all ages over 35, higher death rates from cancer than males of the same social class. Table 1 CANCER DEATH RATES IN SKILLED GAS WORKERS AND MALES OF SAME SOCIAL CLASS* (REGISTRAR-GENERAL'S DECENNIAL SUPPLEMENT ON OCCUPATIONAL MORTALITY 1930-32)