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CASE STUDY
The National Gallery of Australia was monitoring sick leave when it found something worrying. Five of its security guards had been diagnosed with cancer between 1997 and 2002, three of them since February 2001.
"There could be something in the work environment which is contributing to it," said the gallery's human resources manager, Ms Melinda Carlisle, in an e-mail to her boss on 21 February 2002. Ms Carlisle had learned earlier that day about the latest case -- one of bowel cancer.
"All five people are suffering (or suffered) from a different form of cancer so there doesn't appear to be any pattern and it would be unlikely that work contributed or was responsible," she said. However, the gallery needed to know if the illnesses were a coincidence.
Three days later there was more bad news. According to a note from Ms Carlisle, nine more guards had been diagnosed with cancer over an unspecified period. "We don't want to alarm staff but at the same time we would like to be as open and honest as possible," she wrote. "I will meet with security staff ... to advise them of what we are doing and why we are doing it."
--from the Sydney Morning Herald, 23 January 2005
CLUSTERS of disease can be of immense concern to a workplace or the surrounding community. Particularly where cancer is involved, those concerned can become highly emotive and disputes may lead to media investigations, industrial disputes and drawn-out legal battles.
In the case study example (above), the investigation is ongoing due to media and employee pressure. Despite the first report showing a cancer incidence in National Gallery workers below that for the population of Canberra, other commentators are demanding a second inquiry.
In the Sydney Morning Herald of 24 May 2006, the gallery's director was said to have decided not to allocate resources to such an inquiry because it was likely to take a long time and cost a large amount, and was unlikely to yield a definitive answer.
WHAT IS A CANCER CLUSTER?
A cluster can be defined as an "aggregation of relatively uncommon events or diseases in space and/or time in amounts that are believed or perceived to be greater than could be...