Asbestos fibres are not the only source of cancer. Some kinds of wood dust cause a specific
kind of sinus cancer – ethmoid carcinoma. The discovery dates back to 1965, when doctors
in the Oxford area began seeing an abnormally high number of sinus cancer cases.
They observed that the patients were mainly carpenters and cabinetmakers. Puzzled by
this, they consulted the regional cancer registry to find a concentration of nasal cavity
carcinomas – mainly among woodworkers – in a small area of Buckinghamshire where
many furniture factories are located. A large-scale national survey confirmed their findings
(Acheson et al. 1972).
On the Continent, doctors in France, Belgium and Denmark were not long in coming
to the same conclusions. Ethmoid adenocarcinoma became a recognised occupational disease
in England in 1969, in Belgium in 1976, France in 1981, and Germany in 1987.
The British researchers’ investigations into ethmoid adenocarcinoma uncovered
a higher rate of nasal cancers among leather and footwear industry workers. The highest
risk was found among workers in the preparation and finishing shops, where cutting,
polishing and sanding operations exposed them to high concentrations of leather dust.
Hotly-disputed at first, the findings were definitively confirmed in 1988 by a Danish study
(Olsen 1988).
This kind of joining-up of data, if extended to other European countries, could in
future help bring to light as yet unidentified risks and confirm statistical associations. So,
the Nordic occupational cancer study (NOCCA) found that dust from not just some but all
types of wood could cause cancer. Both men and women employed in furniture manufacture
in the Nordic countries have almost double the risk of developing nasal cancer as the rest
of the population, and for exposed men it was 5.5 times higher for a particular type of nasal
cancer (adenocarcinoma).
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