Working with poultry linked to certain cancers

Mon Nov 2, 2009 2:37pm EST

By Adam Marcus

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -- Poultry workers may be at particularly high risk of developing several forms of cancer, according to a new study that points to viruses carried by birds as a possible cause.

The findings come from an ongoing effort by researchers to identify job-related illnesses in the nation's 250,000 poultry processing workers. It found higher than expected rates of cancers of the sinuses, mouth and blood, as well as other forms of the disease, in poultry plant employees.

The researchers said cancer-causing viruses transmitted during the handling and slaughter of chickens and turkeys, as well as environmental factors such as exposure to fumes generated during the wrapping, smoking and cooking of meat, along with other aspects of production, may be to blame for the increased rates of illness.

Some of the viruses present in birds are found in the egg supply. And because many vaccines are made using chicken eggs as incubators, the viruses have also been found in the vaccine stock - in particular, the shots against measles, mumps, and yellow fever, according to the researchers. However, scientists have not found evidence that the presence of the viruses is harmful to humans.

Still, "These observations have serious public health implications and reiterate the urgent need for studies to be conducted in subjects that have high exposure to the (cancer-causing) viruses of poultry, such as workers in poultry slaughtering and processing plants," they wrote in the journal Cancer Causes & Control.

Study leader Eric Johnson, an epidemiologist at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, in Fort Worth, said the viruses pose no risk to consumers who eat properly cooked poultry products, including eggs. But eating raw or undercooked eggs and poultry or handling raw meat may be hazardous, he told Reuters Health.


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