Occupational Cancers with Chemical Exposure and Prevention in Korea: A Literature Review

The usage and types of chemicals become developed, specialized, diversified, and newly exposed workers are concerning to occupational disease. In Korea, with the industrialization, the uses of many chemicals have increased since the 1970s. As a consequence, there have been increasing the occupational diseases caused by poisonous chemicals, such as heavy metal poisoning, solvent poisoning and occupational cancer from late 1980s. Many actions have been taken for prevention by the government, employers and employees or unions. In the 1990s most chemical related diseases and pneumoconiosis have rapidly decreased due to improving work environment. Occupational cancers are increasing because of their long latency, although the use of carcinogenic substances are reduced, limited, and even banned (Kang and Kim, 2010). To analyze the characteristics of the occupational diseases, we compensated with the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance that is operated by the Korea Labor Welfare Corporation (KLWC). About 1.0% of all diseases were cancer, and the causal hazardous agents were chemical agents, heavy metals and so on. It was suggested that a management policy must be established to prevent occupational cancers occurring among workers in Korea (Ahn et al., 2004). The proportion of cancer as a cause of death in Korea has been continuously increasing. In 2000, about 24%