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About Cancer among Norwegian offshore workers

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It is known that some of the chemical compounds in crude oil and gas can be carcinogenic. The Cancer Registry of Norway has several ongoing research projects that study the incidence and risk of cancer among offshore workers.

In 1989, the CRN received a request from the Norwegian Oil Industry Association (today Norwegian Oil and Gas). The Norwegian oil industry had grown significantly during the 1970s and 80s and the Norwegian Oil Industry Association was interested in an overview of cancer incidence and mortality among offshore workers. Following the request, CRN conducted a large survey in 1998 among 28,000 people who worked offshore between 1965 and 1998. Data from the survey resulted in the "Offshore-cohort", which has been the basis for several publications.

During the last decades, working environment and potential health hazards in the oil industry have received more attention. The Government has stated in reports to the Norwegian Parliament, that they want Norway to be a world leader in health safety and environment (HSE) standards in petroleum activities. As the industry is constantly developing, and with greater attention to HSE, there has been a need for exposure-related cancer studies from recent years, including data after 1998.

Thus, with broad support from the industry, unions and regulators, the CRN started in 2019 to plan a new project. In this project, the plan is to use data from helicopter transport to offshore platforms, to identify individuals who have been offshore in the period from the 1980s until today. This cohort is called the "Heliport-cohort". The Heliport cohort will be a unique database that will provide an updated and almost complete overview of the employee group at offshore installations – and hence a high-quality monitoring tool for studies of benzene exposure and cancer risk from, and potentially other exposures and health outcomes, depending on formal authorization from regulatory agencies.

Tidslinje for Kreftregisterets arbeid med offshorearbeidere
Timeline for the project Cancer among norwegian offshore workers

Findings

Long-term rotating shift work can increase the risk of aggressive prostate cancer. Read more.
Increased risk for some cancer types among offshore workers compared to the remaining Norwegian population.

The risk of some types of lymphoma and leukaemia (acute myeloid leukaemia, multiple myeloma and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia) appears to increase as benzene exposure increases.
The risk of skin cancer appears to increase with duration of skin contact with benzene and crude oil. 

Employees in the offshore group

Get to know the offshore research group working on projects that deal with cancer risk among offshore workers. Click on the name to get a detailed profile. 

Prosjektgruppen
From the left: Leon Alexander Mclaren Berge, Mari Messel, Niki Marjerrison, Tom K Grimsrud, Marit Bragelien Veierød, Ronnie Babigumira, Mieke Louwe, Jo S Stenehjem, Nita Kaupan Shala, and Behzad Heibati

Group leader

  • Jo S Stenehjem, Senior Research Scientist

Group participants

  • Tom K Grimsrud, Senior Medical Officer/Senior Research Scientist
  • Marit Bragelien Veierød, Professor, University of Oslo
  • Leon Alexander Mclaren Berge, Researcher, University of Oslo
  • Niki Marjerrison, Researcher, University of Oslo
  • Nita Kaupang Shala, Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Ronnie Babigumira, PhD Research Fellow
  • Jan Ivar Martinsen, Data Manager
  • Mieke Louwe, Senior advisor/Project coordinator

Allumni

  • Fei Chih (Phillip) Liu, PhD-student 2019–2022, Disputation 23-Sept-2022
  • Behzad Heibati, Postdoc 2023-2024

Academic collaborators

Norwegian partners

International partners

  • Dean Hosgood, Associate Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA
  • Debra Silverman, Director of the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch and Senior Investigator, National Cancer Institute, USA
  • Nathaniel Rotman, Senior Investigator, National Cancer Institute, USA
  • Qing Lan, Senior Investigator, National Cancer Institute, USA
  • Melissa Friessen, Senior Investigator, National Cancer Institute, USA
  • Roel Vermeulen, Professor, Utrecht University, Netherlands 
  • Johannes (Hans) Kromhout, Professor, Utrecht University, Netherlands 
  • Paul Demers, Professor, Occupational Cancer Research Centre, Ontario, Canada 
  • Lawrence Engel, Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
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Financial research support

Projects funded through the Research Council of Norway are:

Research dissemination in media

2024

2023

2022

2021

Peer-reviewd articles

Other reports and publications

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