Background
History of CAREX Canada
CAREX, the International Information System on Occupational Exposure to Carcinogens, was developed by the Finnish Institute for Occupational Health (FIOH) as part of a European Union effort to estimate the burden of occupational cancer. Its purpose was to produce estimates of the number of people with potential workplace exposure to definite, probable, and selected possible workplace carcinogens, as classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 1995. Initially, CAREX was only used to develop and store exposure estimates for the European Union and the United States. More recently, it has been used to estimate the number of workers exposed to carcinogens in the Baltic countries, the Czech Republic, and Costa Rica, and to aid in estimating the global burden of exposure to occupational carcinogens.
In the late 1990s, researchers at UBC started a pilot project that used the CAREX model to estimate exposure to workplace carcinogens in British Columbia, and were subsequently funded by WorkSafe BC in 2003 to continue the project. With the permission of the Finnish Institute for Occupational Health, CAREX Canada was created. This project improved upon the initial estimates of the number of workers exposed to occupational carcinogens in BC, and examined the feasibility of other sources of data to improve on the estimates of the number of workers exposed to occupational carcinogens. Consequently, a collaborative project was started with Cancer Care Ontario to expand the project to Ontario.
The current CAREX Canada project, made possible through funding from Health Canada through the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, will expand CAREX to all of Canada, including both occupational and environmental settings.
Uses of Carcinogen Surveillance
The principal uses of information generated by this project will be primary prevention, exposure and disease surveillance, and research. Examples include:
- setting priorities for prevention-related activities
- assessing the impact of policy, regulations, and interventions
- assisting with the identification of the causes of specific cancers
- determining why large geographic differences in cancer rates exist in Canada
- monitoring trends in carcinogen exposure or cancer prevalence over time
- targeting population groups at high risk of developing cancer for preventative interventions
- estimating the current burden of cancer associated with historical exposure to environmental and occupational carcinogens
- predicting the future burden of cancer for health planning purposes
- identifying research priorities, knowledge gaps and future needs
- improving exposure assessment for epidemiologic studies
- improving risk assessment
While the output of the proposed projects is primarily directed at policy makers in government, cancer researchers, and organizations involved in cancer prevention, other end-users of the information will include health care practitioners and providers, workers’ compensation authorities and the general public.