Scoping Review of 5 Common Occupational Cancers and Their Related Exposures

Occupational cancers can be avoided by removing dangerous chemicals from the workplace or limiting occupational exposure. Approximately, 10 major risk factors account for 85% of all occupational cancers. This scoping review study aimed to determine the most important chemical carcinogens related to 5 known occupational cancers.   

In this scoping review, we followed Arksey and O’Malley’s 5-step framework. Four databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus) were systematically reviewed for relevant published papers from January 2000 to September 2021. Studies were included in this scoping review, which examined the effect of carcinogenic (definite and probable) chemical exposures on 5 known occupational cancers (lung, bladder, laryngeal, leukemia, and liver). We reported the types of occupational carcinogens, the geographical diversity of studies, extraction of relative risks (RRs), hazard ratios (HRs), or odds ratios (ORs), and identified gaps in the existing literature.  

The highest number of studies was related to lung cancer (LC) (n = 26), bladder cancer (BC) (n = 11), laryngeal cancer (LaC) (n = 8), leukemia (LeC) (n = 3), and primary liver cancer (PLC) (n = 2), respectively. Most studies were performed in France and Canada (n = 8), Germany (n = 4), Finland (n = 3), Netherlands (n = 2), and Finland (n = 2), respectively. Furthermore, the most common occupational chemical carcinogens associated with the 5 known occupational cancers were asbestos, benzene, crystalline silica, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and diesel motor exhausts (DME).   

Although the attributable risk of occupational cancers in developing countries is much higher, a small proportion of studies were performed in these countries.