Nearly a third of Europe's health workers face cancer risks on the job

Health and social care workers in Europe are exposed to a wide range of avoidable factors that can contribute to cancer, a new study has found.

Cancer remains the leading cause of work‑related deaths in the European Union, accounting for 100,000 fatalities annually and exposing millions of workers to cancer risk factors in their daily jobs, according to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA).

Now, the Workers' Exposure Survey, conducted by the EU-OSHA, has found that 47.3% of assessed workers across all sectors were exposed to at least one cancer risk factor during the last working week.

The survey included 24,402 telephone interviews from 2022 to 2023 with workers in Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, and Spain.

Among health and social care workers, 29.5% reported being exposed to one or more cancer risk factors, and 7.8% to two or more.