Some 7,000 people a year are diagnosed with work-related cancers, research on behalf of cancer charity KWF Kankerbestrijding has shown.

One in 10 people who have lung cancer contracted the disease because they work with harmful substances. Two-thirds of cases involved a type of skin cancer affecting people who worked outside.

“It is mostly people in professions that involve being outside, such as builders, roofers and postal workers as well as [eople who come into contact with carcinogenic substances include welders, house painters but also people working in transport,” KWF director Dorine Manson told broadcaster NOS.

Over 4,800 people contracted cancer through exposure to UV radiation at work, the figures showed. Some 1,720 people were left with squamous cell carcinoma while over 3,100 contracted basal skin carcinoma which is less serious and seldom lethal.

The research, carried out by the TNO research centre and based on data from 2021, identified several factors, including exposure to asbestos and quartz particles, which are commonly used in the building industry, emissions from diesel engines, and UV radiation. The research also focused on welders and house painters, two professions with a higher risk of work-related cancer.

Of the cancer diagnoses in 2021 1,406 were found to be linked to asbestos, 233 to quartz particles, and 187 to fumes from diesel engines. Some 239 painters and 212 welders were found to have cancer.

Men are at a higher risk than women, TNO found because their jobs more often involve exposure to harmful substances. Some 5.4% of cancer sufferers contracted the disease through their work, compared to 0.5% of women.

The survival rate among people with cancer has gone up in the last 20 years but harmful emissions have also gone up.

In a report from 2023 labour inspectors found companies “regularly” fail to protect workers from the effects of hazardous substances because they underestimate the danger and because the effects on health only surface much later. Some 100,000 companies in the Netherlands handle hazardous substances.

Chromium 6

In 2016, 800 jobless people were exposed to the toxic and carcinogenic chromium 6 paint during a work scheme for Dutch railway company NS in Tilburg. They were not given protective clothing although the risks were known at the time.

In 2021 an investigation by health institute RIVM showed that exposure of army personnel to chromium 6 paint had been much more widespread than previously assumed.

An earlier report by the RIVM had already shown that the defence ministry failed to protect maintenance staff at five Nato depots who came into contact with the toxic paint in the 1970s and 80s.