Critique of the IARC 100F Working Group Evaluation of Occupational Benzene Exposure: Suggestions for the October 2017 Benzene-Only Working Group Meeting

Health agencies and institutions utilize International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) monographs because they are said to represent authoritative cancer evaluations and scientific references. The United States National Cancer Institute has provided support for the IARC Monographs Program for more than three decades. The Volume 100F Monograph, which was published in 2012, reports the evaluations of benzene and more than two dozen other agents performed by the IARC Working Group (WG) that met in Lyon, France from 20 to 27 October 2009. All had already been judged to be human carcinogens. This commentary discusses errors in the occupational exposure section (1.1.3) of the 100F Benzene Monograph (“monograph”). Millions of workers in developed and developing countries have long been known to be routinely exposed to benzene. Since exposures may exceed occupational exposure limits, the hope is that this commentary will be considered by the IARC benzene-only WG at its meeting in October 2017.