Childhood Cancer: Dangers of Factory Life Brought Home

The document we are looking at today is a newspaper article from 1981.

It highlights a study that suggests children with parents who worked with chemicals had a higher chance of getting brain tumors. The study examined a group of 92 children and found that "seven times as many of the children with brain tumors had fathers who worked with paint." This is an astounding statistic, and speaks to the immense risk that children were exposed to indirectly.

It also raises interesting questions about the time of the transmission. The parents exposure to the chemicals took place before, during, and after pregnancy, which is a critical time of neural growth but also exposure.

Children came into contact with industry solvents, chemicals, and paints through a vareity of ways. The article writes:

"The study cited several 'plausible' ways a child could be affected by a parent's occupational exposure, including contact with soiled workclothes and the mother's contact with soiled workclothes before or during pregnancy or while breastfeeding.

Thus, without knowing, many children were indirectly exposed to occupational hazards which probably increased their risk of cancer. Because this was less of a direct connection, it was harder to regulate. Industry negligence at the workplace also contributed to a child's risk of contracting cancer. We have written before about how many factories had unsatisfactory hygiene standards, including lack of working showers for the employees to change clothes before and after they came to work. This made it harder to contain industrial chemicals within the workplace.