The Italian Monitoring System for Occupational Cancers: Initial Results and Future Developments

Occupational cancer monitoring is important for prevention and identification of new sources of occupational related cancers. To establish a surveillance system in Italy for identifying cancer cases of occupational origin, and estimating the burden of occupational cancers, we assessed the potential of using routinely archived employment information. Cancer cases and appropriate controls were obtained from population-based cancer registries. Employment history in terms of industrial sector worked and years of employment were obtained from the Italian Institute for Social Security. Using this information we identified many known occupational hazards for several cancers. We also applied the same approach to more recently diagnosed cancer cases obtained from hospital discharge records and were able to identify recent cases likely to be of occupational origin for several economic sectors. Although this approach suffers from imitations, for example only the economic sector in which worked and not the actual occupation is archived by Italian Social Security, it appears a promising and low cost tool for occupational cancer monitoring, at least for some areas of economic activity, and can be easily implemented to other counties of the European Union that systematically archive limited information on employment history.