Transport Workers' Health
Request ID: FOI-3118-1819
Date published: 13 March 2019
You asked
Dear Sirs,
I am currently researching the medical effect of particulate matter in underground tunnels. To that end I am requesting information regarding the number of London Underground workers who have become ill with either a respiratory disease, environmentally influenced cancer or Parkinson's disease whilst employed by London Transport. Any data available would be most appreciated. In the absence of such data, statistics regarding employment days lost as a result of respiratory illness would also be most helpful.
I would be interested to receive information regarding figures for the most recent time period - 2018 in particular. However, if you were able to provide information covering any of the time period from 2008 onwards, that would be most appreciated.
Thank you
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-3118-1819
Thank you for your request received on 18 February 2019 asking for information about the medical effects of particulate matter on the London Underground.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Environmental Information Regulations and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold the information you require.
Please see the information requested below for London Underground. There were circa 17,600 employees working for London Underground in 2018. For the period 2008-17 the average number of employees was circa 16,250. Only a small proportion of London Underground employees have roles that require tunnel working and not all London Underground employees would work at platform level or even within enclosed stations under ground. More than half of the stations on the Tube network are actually above ground and we have no way of extracting data on our employees to include only those that worked below ground or specifically in and around tunnels. The following map provides an illustration of this: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tube-map-with-tunnels.pdf.
Please note that the figures provided below is general data on medical causes of sickness absence within TfL. This data does not give you any information on the exact nature of the illness, its causes or any information on risk factors or confounding factors such as age, gender or past medical history. As explained above, it also does not relate specifically to staff working below ground or around tunnels. It should also be noted that the cancer / carcinoma / neoplasms figures are all reported cases of cancer not just environmentally influenced cases. The respiratory figures are also not just related to respiratory disease but all respiratory conditions.
These are overall figures and we are unable to define those that were work related. An employee can also have more than one spell of illness:
Cancers/Carcinoma/Neoplasms Neurological Respiratory
No. of Employees No. of Days Absent No. of Employees No. of Days Absent No. of Employees No. of Days Absent
2018 112 6628 0 0 653 6907
2008-17 480 47,272 5 346 4791 55,899
If this is not the information you are looking for please feel free to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Gemma Jacob
Senior FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
[email protected]
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