The health experience of workers in the petroleum manufacturing and distribution industry

Report no. 2/87: A review over one hundred papers on the health effects of workers engaged in the manufacture and distribution of gasoline revealed inconsistent results. This may, in part, be due to the variable quality of the epidemiological studies.

There is, however, the consistent finding of a deficit for "all causes mortality" and for"all cancers mortality", thus implying that a widespread serious health effect of gasoline exposure seems remote. The evidence for a link between occupation and health effects is weak; however, the possibility exists that occupational aetiological factors may play apart in the pathogenesis of brain cancer and renal disease. Further work of better quality is necessary to investigate those diseases where there remains a suspicion of an occupational aetiology.