Spain recently signed the covenant of the Roadmap on Carcinogens to join as a partner. Meanwhile, the Spanish National Institute for Safety and Health at Work (INSST), committed to the objective of improving the prevention of occupational diseases, has promoted the campaign “TODAY, LET’S AVOID TOMORROW’S OCCUPATIONAL CANCER” to raise awareness of the importance of avoiding exposure to substances carcinogenic or mutagenic chemicals at work.
Call to action
This campaign is a further action in the fight against occupational cancer to raise awareness to the fact that exposure to carcinogenic substances in the workplace today may be the origin of cancer in the future. It highlights the urgent need to identify these agents in the workplace in order to adopt appropriate preventive measures and avoid occupational cancer.
Preventing exposure to carcinogens or mutagens at work is possible, but it must be everyone’s job. Therefore, this campaign is a call to action to workers, employers and prevention services. INSST searched for alliances to ensure that the messages reach the largest possible number of recipients.
Graphic and audiovisual material
The intense dissemination on social networks has been supported by diverse graphic material and audiovisual pieces, available on the INSST website www.insst.es/evitemos-hoy-el-cancer-laboral-de-manana and technical material:
- The collection “Carcinogenic agents at work: Knowing to prevent” is made up of a series of monographic brochures on the carcinogenic agents that can be most commonly found in the workplace. For each of these agents, an information poster has also been produced for workers who are or may be exposed to these agents at work. These sheets contain information on where exposure to the agent may occur, what health risks it may cause, and what the main preventive and control measures are. This material is a very useful tool for identifying, assessing and controlling the risk of exposure to carcinogens that may be present in a work environment or the processes that generate them, listed in Annex I of Directive 2004/37/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the protection of workers from the risks related to exposure to carcinogens or mutagens at work.
- The collection “Working safely with asbestos” is made up of two types of factsheets: the first, aimed at specific groups of professionals who may find out asbestos or materials containing asbestos during their work, and the second, which sets out working safely procedures with asbestos.
