Ah, come on. If you read what I said, I said I had not seen much cancer in
histotechs, I think that is hardly being alarming.
Patsy
-----Original Message-----
From: RSRICHMOND@aol.com [mailto:RSRICHMOND@aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 7:11 AM
To: HistoNet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: Re: Information desired
Patsy Ruegg writes about histotechnologists and other
technologists with
leukemias, lymphomas, and other cancers.
Anecdotal information in this area is worse than useless -
it alarms people
without providing any needed information. Remember that at
least a third of
us will eventually get cancer.
What is needed is a registry of histotechnology workers that
would track
their medical histories, at least to the extent of obtaining
and analyzing
death certificates. The AMA does this for physicians, and
useful data has
been obtained that way - for example, excessive chronic
myelocytic leukemia
in old time radiologists. (Pathologists as far as I know do
not have a
different cancer experience from other physicians.)
Histotechnologists probably get more aromatic (xylene,
toluene) exposure and
less formaldehyde exposure than pathologists. It would be
interesting to find
out if histotechnologists have more chronic myelocytic
leukemia and
myeloproliferative disorders than other medical
technologists do, since these
diseases are known to be related to aromatic solvent
exposure.
Unfortunately, the fact that so many histology workers are
uncertified and
transient would make a registry of this sort extremely
difficult to put
together. Particularly since it's probably the marginal
workers in the field
who get the most solvent exposure.
Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist
Knoxville TN
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