The different carcinogenic products present in mines and their effects on health are detailed in this book.
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The CGT publishes the first collection of cancer risks linked to work in mines, reports Tuesday February 13 France Bleu Lorraine Nord. If all the mines in France have closed (the last being Houve in Creutzwald in Moselle which closed 20 years ago in April 2004), 40,000 former miners are still affiliated with the mining regime and have been particularly exposed to carcinogenic products. during their career.
This book, entitled (Re)knowledge of carcinogenic risks at work in mineswas published on December 28, 2023 by Arcane 17. Editions of 2,000 copies and published by the National Federation of Mines and Energy of the CGT, it summarizes all the mine job descriptions and all the carcinogenic products to which the minors were confronted as well as the recommended medical examinations.
Carcinogenic products that add up
“Often, we do not know what products we have encountered, including minors”explains Richard Caudy, from the Mines Energie federation of the CGT. “The particularity of miners is that they suffer from multiple pathologies: the air breathed, the products used, the working conditions in a confined environment or on the surface… Everything adds up, which we do not find not in other professions.”
The aim of this collection is also to enable sick miners to have their pathology recognized as an occupational illness. For Alain Carré, retired occupational physician, who participated in the development of the collection, “there is a lack of knowledge, an omerta and even a bad will of the social security organizations, which were previously in empathy with the insured, and which today have ‘a priori’ pejorative and suspicious of policyholders”.
This book required seven years of work, the time to interview former miners who worked in many professions (electricians, drillers, drillers, etc.). Time also to compile data from all French mining areas, for example, in Lorraine, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Alsace, Cévennes, Provence, Isère, Saône-et-Loire, in coal mines, uranium, slate or potash.