July/August: Toxic turnaround
July 30th 2009 A landmark ruling against Corby Council has given a group of young people suffering from birth defects the right to sue for negligence. It is believed that the council’s reclamation work on a former British Steel site could have led to their mothers being exposed to toxic contaminants while they were pregnant, potentially causing the children’s disabilities.
The ruling is significant because it’s rare for such a case to reach the courts. An internet search of birth defects and and exposure to chemicals such as glycol ethers, reveals several cases which have settled out of court.
Given the ethical issues surrounding experiments to determine the effect of the toxic chemicals on human embryos and that there could be a number of causes of birth defects; it is impossible to explicitly prove a link between toxic substances and damage caused to a baby in the womb. As Claire Brook an environmental expert at Dickinson Dees LLP explains, even in this case “there is currently no authoritative evidence that spells out a direct connection between the inhalation and ingestion of the specific toxic material and the types of birth defects suffered. It was the fact that there was a significant unexplained cluster of children born with defects that suggested an external cause was a probability.”
Earlier this year the European Agency for Safety and Health at work (EU-OSHA) published a report suggesting that exposure to hazardous substances is one of the most serious emerging risks faced by workers in the EU, highlighting reprotoxicants, substances which interfere with reproduction and foetal development, as particularly poorly understood. A subsequent www.hsmsearch.com poll confirmed a huge lack of awareness surrounding this subject and revealed 80% of readers do not include reprotoxicants in their risk assessments.
We don’t know what the final outcome will be for each of the individuals in the Corby ruling or if any other cases will ever make it to court. But we do know that exposure to these substances can be seriously damaging and that by taking appropriate action, people can be kept safe. In this month’s Insight HSM talks to two of the leading authorities on this subject about the related risks in the workplace and how they can be managed.
Georgina Bisby
Editor
Health & Safety Matters
gbisby@western-bp.co.uk More articles from HSM News Desk: | 
