Vesical Tumours Induced by Chemical Compounds

Abstract

The accumulated records of cases of vesical tumours occurring among workers in that part of the chemical industry which deals with organic intermediates, especially aromatic amines, would seem to be sufficient to justify the conclusion that there is such a thing as aromatic amine cancer. The impressive figures of Gehrmann (1936) in the United States, M?ller (1933) in Switzerland and di Maio (1937) in Italy, apart from the German data, amply confirm the statement of di Maio che i tumori e le lesioni precancerose della vescica negli op?rai delle fabbriche di nitro derivati sono fre quentissimi, although one would wish to substitute amines for nitro derivatives, di Maio's figures are especially striking : he found between 1931 and 1937, among eighty-six workers in two factories engaged in manufacture of aromatic amines and nitro compounds, four bladder cancers, seven papillomata, and twenty-six cases of a variety of vascular lesions (simple congestions, varicosities, and telangiectasis) which he regarded as pre cancerous. di Maio's figures were collected by the only method which at any given time can gi\Q a true incidence of the disease in any group, viz., by cystoscopic examination of the whole group. J. C. Bridge, who was, to the end of his life, most active in his attempts to eradicate the disease from the chemical industry and to establish an equitable basis for compensation of this, in Britain, non scheduled industrial disease, published some striking figures in his 1933 Report to the Chief Inspector of Factories. These figures showed that in one of the smaller manufacturing towns in England where the manufacture of organic intermediates had been going on for many years, the admission to the local Infirmary of cases of bladder tumour were as follows :