Occupational carcinogens and cancer in children

This chapter reviews two aspects of the literature relating childhood cancer to occupational exposures. First, we review published reports that examine associations between childhood cancer and parental exposures to carcinogens in the workplace. In the first portion of this chapter, we consider maternal as well as paternal exposures to occupational carcinogens in several different windows of time – preconception (more than 1 year prior to birth), periconception (3 months before and after conception), during pregnancy, and postnatally. Then in the second portion of this chapter, we examine the emerging literature on the health consequences of child workers' occupational exposures to carcinogens in the workplace. Here we consider carcinogenic hazards confronting youth workers in the United States (US) as well as those confronting child laborers in developing countries.