International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)

Built World

Body responsible for classifying night shift work as a probable carcinogen

For most of human history, nightfall meant the end of productive labor. The industrial revolution and the electric lightbulb reversed that arrangement, turning overnight factory shifts into a pillar of modern manufacturing. But a quieter reversal has been underway for decades: the share of workers toiling through the night has been falling steadily across wealthy nations, driven by labor regulations, mounting health evidence, and machines that can run in the dark without human hands.

Updated Feb 28

New Capabilities

Published landmark preventable cancer analysis

Four in ten cancer cases worldwide could be prevented. That finding, from the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer, marks the first time researchers have quantified the combined burden of behavioral, environmental, occupational, and infectious causes of cancer using global data from 185 countries. The analysis, published in Nature Medicine ahead of World Cancer Day, estimates that 7.1 million cancer cases in 2022 were linked to just 30 modifiable risk factors.

Updated Feb 19

Rule Changes

Classified firefighting as Group 1 carcinogenic

Maryland became the latest battleground in a national fight to protect firefighters from cancer when the James Malone Act took effect January 1, 2026, requiring every county with a self-insured health plan to provide free cancer screenings to professional firefighters—no copays, no deductibles, no excuses. The law, named for former Delegate Jimmy Malone who died of brain cancer in December 2024 after decades in the fire service, targets ten cancer types that kill firefighters at dramatically higher rates than the general population. The same month Maryland's law launched, President Trump's signature on the Honoring Our Fallen Heroes Act expanded federal death benefits to families of firefighters who die from occupational cancer—putting the federal government's stamp on what firefighters have been saying for years: cancer is a line-of-duty death.

Updated Feb 5