ENGINEERING and shipbuilding workers are being urged to get checked for cancer, notably those workers who work — or worked — as welders.

Welding fumes are shown to cause cancers — and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU), along with the Alex Ferry Foundation, a charity linked to the CSEU, has launched the Breathe Safe campaign to raise awareness.

The campaign was launched on June 23 in Glasgow, with CSEU general secretary Ian Waddell saying: “We believe that the numbers of welders diagnosed with these conditions is the tip of the iceberg. 

“We want welders, retired workers and also their families to understand what the symptoms look like so they can take immediate action.”

According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE): “Many studies report increased risk of lung cancer in welders or other workers exposed to welding fume.

“The International Association for Research on Cancer conclude that all welding fume can cause lung cancer and may cause kidney cancer, classifying all welding fume as Group 1 carcinogenic substances.”

Four years ago, the HSE issued a safety alert about the link between mild steel welding fume and cancer.

Waddell told the launch conference in Glasgow,  the Breathe Safe campaign will raise awareness among the UK’s 88,000 welders and their families of potential symptoms including sore eyes, itching and unsteadiness.

Too often, the anecdotal evidence is that workers go to their doctors to complain about persistent coughs or sore throats or stomach or bladder problems, and the first questions are “Do you smoke? How much do you drink? How is your diet? Do you exercise?” 

The idea that someone’s work might be the cause rarely enters the conversation.

The Breathe Safe campaign wants welders to see their GP, and employers to offer annual health checks and provide proper ventilation equipment.

The campaign is also targeting the families of welders and former welders to come forward to tell their stories, to monitor their own health; to use safe systems of work and PPE and to tell their doctor that they work with welding fumes.

The CSEU also says it needs employers to change the way work is done to stop people being exposed at all wherever possible.

If not, safe systems of work, proper PPE and rigorous health monitoring must be in place and for the medical profession to see the potential scale of this issue and get GPs to make the link between a patient’s work and their symptoms.

The CSEU hopes that conditions associated with welding fume will eventually be treated as a notifiable disease by the government, paving the way for sufferers to receive compensation.

Senior union convener John Brown of the GMB union said: “We want as many people as possible to come forward and tell their story to make sure that this important industrial condition receives national recognition in the same way that asbestos now does.

“It is vital that shipyard workers and anyone exposed to welding fume in transport repair, construction and machinery manufacturing see their doctor for regular check-ups.

“For too long symptoms have gone unnoticed or been dismissed as a cold when there is something much more seriously wrong.”

The Breathe Safe campaign — funded by the CSEU and the Alex Ferry Foundation, named after a former CSEU general secretary — is working with the all-party parliamentary group on respiratory disease.

MPs and peers plan to hold an inquiry in Parliament later this year.

Tony Burke is the president of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, which involves Unite, GMB, Community and Prospect.