Amoco says rare cancer probably work-related
The BP Amoco Corp., based in Chicago, announced recently that a medical investigation has determined that an unusually high incidence of a rare brain cancer among its employees probably is work-related.
The company hired investigators from the University of Alabama in Birmingham and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to look into claims that the workers somehow contracted the disease as a result of their work at the Amoco Research Center in Naperville, IL. Amoco announced recently that the researchers conclude the cancer is most likely due to "occupational exposure," but they did not pinpoint the exact cause.
Over the past 10 years, six chemical researchers were found to have glioma, a rare and often deadly form of brain cancer. Amoco now says those cancers were related to the employees’ chemical research, but the company says the medical investigation shows no such link to 13 other cases of cancer reported by employees.
At a news conference announcing the findings, Amoco officials said the university researchers had been working on the problem since 1989. They did not identify a specific cancer-causing agent, but they found that the glioma victims all used low-level ionizing radiation and n-hexane, a solvent. Those agents are thought to cause cancer, but they still may be related in some way to the rare cancer, officials say.
Amoco has largely phased out the use of both agents.
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