A/HRC/39/48 water and food contamination, or to lifestyle choices such as unhealthy diets and tobacco and other harmful substance use. 47. The economic insecurity of workers who are typically exposed to toxic substances is often exploited. The fear of job losses is often used to dissuade workers, regulators and politicians from improving protection of workers from exposure to toxic substances. 2. Women workers 48. Women comprise a significant proportion of workers in certain occupations and sectors, such as manufacturing and agriculture, as well as services and informal work, that carry a higher risk of toxic exposures (see, e.g., A/HRC/36/41). Gender-specific impacts are reported. Increasing evidence points to an association between breast cancer and occupational exposures to various pesticides, industrial chemicals and metals. 46 There are multiple examples of increased risk of miscarriages in the manufacture of electronics. 47 Women of reproductive age are often tasked with the use of toxic heavy metals such as mercury in artisanal gold mining, placing both themselves and future children at grave risk of health impacts. 3. Child labour 49. Children continue to be engaged in one of the worst forms of child labour where they use or are exposed to toxic substances at work. For various reasons, children are far more likely to be exposed to toxic substances and are more sensitive to such exposures than adults, and thus far more likely to suffer occupational diseases as a result. 48 50. An estimated 73 million children work in mines, agricultural fields and factories, where most are likely to be exposed to various toxic substances.49 About 60 per cent of child labourers work in agriculture, including where pesticides are used. 50 Children are also known to work with mercury in artisanal and small-scale gold mines in up to 70 countries globally, with some developing symptoms consistent with mercury poisoning. 51 Hazardous exposure of children is present at various stages of a consumer product’s lifecycle. In electronics, tens of thousands of children mine a toxic ingredient of batteries (cobalt) at the front end of the lifecycle52 and also work at the tail end, where they are exposed to various toxic substances by recovering electronic waste. 4. Migrant and temporary workers 51. Migrant workers experience a substantial risk of occupational safety and health hazards for a number of reasons, including lack of training, language barriers, discrimination and restrictions on changing employers. 53 Many migrant workers have jobs that are dirty, dangerous and demanding, and consequently face high risks of work-related accidents and disease. Irregular or undocumented migrant workers are at extreme risk of exploitation by employers who seek to reap the benefits of unfair competition. Clandestine movements, trafficking in persons and modern slavery can coincide with the exposure of migrant workers to toxic substances. 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 Concetta Fenga, “Occupational exposure and risk of breast cancer”, Biomedical Reports, 21 January 2016. R.H. Gray and others, Final Report: The Johns Hopkins University Retrospective and Prospective Studies of Reproductive Health Among IBM Employees in Semiconductor Manufacturing (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, 1993). ILO, Towards the Urgent Elimination of Hazardous Child Labour (Geneva, 2018), p. 36. Ibid., p. vi. ILO, “Hazardous work of children and regulation of hazardous chemicals”, 2011. Human Rights Watch, “Danger, keep out! Children’s exposure to toxic substances”, 28 April 2016. Amnesty International, “This is what we die for”: Human Rights Abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Power the Global Trade in Cobalt, 2016. Kawon Lee, Connor McGuiness and Tsuyoshi Karaskami, Research on Occupational Safety and Health for Migrant Workers in Five Asia and the Pacific Countries: Australia, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand (Bangkok, ILO, 2011), p. 20. 11