A new report by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) looking into occupational cancers has thrown up surprising results – about 2,000 women across Britain develop breast cancer a year largely due to working in night shifts, accounting for more than half the registered cases of women cancer sufferers in the country.

The report, which quantifies work-related cancers in detail specifically for the UK for the first time ever, also states that more than 550 women in the country die of breast cancer caused by working in night shifts.

Professor Andrew Watterson, head of occupational environmental health research at Stirling University, said the study’s conclusions could now tilt compensation cases in the favour of litigants suffering from cancer.

Shift work is the third largest culprit among the top ten factors with the largest number of cancer deaths and also takes the second spot for registrations of cancer cases, according to the report.

Denmark recently declared breast cancer as an occupational disease, allowing sufferers to get compensation from their employers more easily. The conclusions of the HSE study could have a profound effect on how night shifts for women are viewed in the light of such health hazards. A large number of women in the UK work in night shifts, the reports says.

But Audrey Birt, director of Breakthrough Breast Cancer in Scotland, has cautioned against rushing into any hasty conclusions. Birt said the matter needed to be investigated further since the HSE study used data collected from different sources and did not take into account other factors that women are exposed to before developing breast cancer.

Courses leading to the NEBOSH National General Certificate in Occupational Safety and Health are designed to help those with health and safety responsibilities to carry out their duties at work more effectively and to protect the organisations for which they work. Click NEBOSH for information on courses to learn more on the management of safety and health.