ABSTRACT
Occupational carcinogens have an important role in the identification and prevention of cancer. They were the first human carcinogens to be identified and a large proportion of the carcinogens currently identified originate in the workplace. In England in 1771, Percival Pott, in his work Chirurgical works, described a higher frequency of cancer in the scrotum among chimney sweeps and associated the disease with exposure to soot. Bladder cancer, which is among the major cancers attributed to occupational exposures, occupies an important place in the history of occupational cancer epidemiology since the highest cumulative incidence of any cancer ever reported is for bladder cancer among workers in the dye industry. In addition, studies on occupational cancer have been among the first to develop methods for the conduct of historical cohort studies applying the concept of person-years1 through the pioneering work of Bradford Hill in 1948 and Richard Doll in 1952. Occupational cancers should be considered as preventable and this makes their identification even more necessary. The benefits of prevention go beyond occupational settings since the general population is also exposed to several of these compounds, for example asbestos, benzene, diesel exhaust and formaldehyde.
