Soon after IARC was established in 1965,
it received frequent requests for advice on the carcinogenic
risk of chemicals, including requests for lists of known
and suspected human carcinogens. It was clear that it would
not be a simple task to summarize adequately the complexity
of the information that was available, and IARC began to
consider means of obtaining international expert opinion
on this topic. In 1970, the IARC Advisory Committee on Environmental
Carcinogenesis recommended ' . . . that a compendium on
carcinogenic chemicals be prepared by experts. The biological
activity and evaluation of practical importance to public
health should be referenced and documented.' The IARC Governing
Council adopted a resolution concerning the role of IARC
in providing government authorities with expert, independent,
scientific opinion on environmental carcinogenesis. As one
means to that end, the Governing Council recommended that
IARC should prepare monographs on the evaluation of carcinogenic
risk of chemicals to man, which became the initial title
of the series.
In the succeeding years, the scope of the programme broadened
as Monographs were developed for groups of related chemicals,
complex mixtures, occupational exposures, physical and
biological agents and lifestyle factors. In 1988, the
phrase 'of chemicals' was dropped from the title, which
assumed its present form, IARC Monographs on the Evaluation
of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans.
Through the Monographs programme, IARC seeks to
identify the causes of human cancer. This is the first
step in cancer prevention, which is needed as much today
as when IARC was established. The global burden of cancer
is high and continues to increase: the annual number of
new cases was estimated at 10.1 million in 2000 and is
expected to reach 15 million by 2020 (Stewart & Kleihues,
2003). With current trends in demographics and exposure,
the cancer burden has been shifting from high-resource
countries to low- and medium-resource countries. As a
result of Monographs evaluations, national health
agencies have been able, on scientific grounds, to take
measures to reduce human exposure to carcinogens in the
workplace and in the environment.
The criteria established in 1971 to evaluate carcinogenic
risks to humans were adopted by the Working Groups whose
deliberations resulted in the first 16 volumes of the
Monographs series. Those criteria were subsequently
updated by further ad-hoc Advisory Groups (IARC, 1977,
1978, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1987, 1988, 1991; Vainio et
al., 1992; IARC, 2005, 2006).
The Preamble is primarily a statement of scientific principles,
rather than a specification of working procedures. The
procedures through which a Working Group implements these
principles are not specified in detail. They usually involve
operations that have been established as being effective
during previous Monograph meetings but remain,
predominantly, the prerogative of each individual Working
Group.
Posted 23 January 2006
