1 Dear Dr. Coombs, President of MEDICHEM Dear Dr. Moser, CEO Science Industries Switzerland Dear Dr. Kuster, Chairman of the Organizing Committee Dear Speakers, Participants and Guests, Ladies & Gentlemen It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Basel, on behalf of the government of Basel-Stadt. I am delighted that you have chosen Basel as the venue for this Congress. Having travelled here from all over the world, you have come together to engage in an international, transregional exchange of ideas, share your experiences and bring together your specific expertise across a range of different subjects. Our region, where people habitually take a crossborder, European approach to thinking, living and working, provides an appropriate background for this. Our open outlook, which stretches beyond borders, and our farsighted and transregional mind-set undoubtedly meet the spirit of this Congress. As a traditional university town, as a hub for science and industry at the heart of Europe, we are very proud and pleased to welcome MEDICHEM! Ladies and gentlemen, At your Congress, you will address various aspects of health and safety at work in the chemical-pharmaceutical industries. Basel has a symbiotic relationship with the chemical industry. The whole region essentially owes its prosperity to the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors, which go back
2 as far as the silk weaving mills of the 16 th century. At the beginning of the 19 th century, the silk ribbon industry already employed around one-third of the population of Basel town and the surrounding region. The flourishing sector also gave rise to the dye industry. Synthetic dye manufacturing gave a big boost to Basel s chemical enterprises which recorded steady, in some cases very rapid growth, and the business segment continued to expand. The development of the pharmaceutical industry, from agricultural chemistry and drugs for humans and animals to what we now refer to as life sciences, was driven by a booming economy, investment, research and medical progress. Protection of the individual worker was, however, an alien concept at the beginning of the industrial revolution. The idea of applying prospective risk analysis to ensure systematic protection of factory employees only arose in the 1950s. Before this time, during examinations which mainly served to identify healthy workers for the plants, factory doctors came across illnesses whose symptoms they tried to explain and treat. The earliest significant example of such illnesses is the bladder carcinoma among so-called aniline workers. Well over a hundred years ago, the Frankfurt-based surgeon Ludwig Rehn already observed a conspicuously high incidence of bladder cancer among chemical workers. He also found the cause of this phenomenon: fuchsine, an aromatic amine that was commonly used in dye mills back then. At the time of the industrial revolution, this theory was not very popular. Factories continued to use the dye until the middle of the last century, and the incidence of bladder cancer among industrial workers increased. It fell to the epidemiologists to finally map the progression from textile
3 dyeing factory or tyre plant to the hospital and, ultimately, the graveyard. In 1933, the Basel-based urologist Achilles Müller finally presented sufficient evidence to prove the correlation between b-naphtylamine and bladder cancer. After that, bladder cancer became a recognized occupational illness and preventive measures were being taken. Today of course, we no longer wait for employees to get sick. We use risk analysis to set up health and safety guidelines at work. The guidelines are based on threshold values at the workplace which developed almost in parallel with the growing knowledge about occupational illnesses. Some of the substances of the past are still being used today, but the relevant processes are closed and protective measures prevent personal contact. Among other aspects, you will be addressing occupational exposure limits. Today, the OELs in occupational medicine also have a direct impact on public health and civil protection, both subject to the Swiss regulations on hazardous incident prevention, because exposure of the population in the immediate vicinity is often comparable to that of employees at the workplace. Highly active substances, which are used in the chemical and especially the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture active ingredients, may serve as an example of this overlap. The Swiss regulations on hazardous incident prevention were recently amended to bring these highly active substances into line with the OELs. This is just one case which shows that the lessons learned in occupational medicine may have a direct impact on public health matters.
4 Ladies and gentlemen, Thanks to the numerous health and safety-related efforts that have been undertaken in the past, traditional health risks at the workplace, for instance accidents, are in continuous decline. In contrast, psychological demands on workers are gaining importance. The fact that psychological disorders are among the most common illnesses is well-known thanks to extensive studies. Around half of the population suffers from a psychological illness once in their lives; excluding drug addictions, the percentage is one-third. Stress and burnout are phenomena that affect not only success-driven managers but all different kinds of population and age groups. It cannot be conclusively determined whether this represents an actual deterioration of general psychological health or whether this trend is also associated with a more open approach and the destigmatisation of psychological problems in society. Still, the occurrence of psychological illnesses remains a fact. Since we have quite a good grip on the classic risks today, we should give more attention to interpersonal problems at work. What we need is a multidisciplinary approach to health and safety at work based on the expertise brought to the subject by toxicologists, doctors, industrial hygienists, safety experts and, increasingly, psychologists and psychiatrists.
5 Ladies and Gentlemen With technologies and related hazards becoming more complex and open to public scrutiny, your work becomes even more important, because you help establish trust in technology which is absolutely crucial in societies and economies that relay on technology, research and progress. I wish you a very productive Congress and a great stay in Basel. We re proud to be your hosts. Thank you very much.