Doctors urge University of Copenhagen to investigate health risks after cancer cases among former staff

Forty-eight doctors who previously worked as dissection guides or specimen preparers at the University of Copenhagen have signed a letter urging the university to investigate potential health risks, Danish broadcaster DR reports.

The call follows a DR documentary revealing that four former student assistants who worked in the basement of the Panum Institute developed cancer before the age of 35, with three of them having since died. The workers handled cadavers preserved with formaldehyde, a colourless chemical linked to cancer.

While no direct connection between the work and the cancer diagnoses has been established, the doctors argue the university should act on the precautionary principle. “At minimum, we want the university to investigate whether there are more cancer cases,” said Julie Blockmann, one of the letter’s initiators and a senior consultant at Hvidovre Hospital.

Blockmann and co-initiator Stine Høyrup compiled a list of 48 former employees who worked in the Panum basement from the 1990s until around 2014, including names, contact details, and employment periods. They said the university had previously cited a lack of data as a barrier to investigating health conditions among former staff.

The university initially rejected the doctors’ request but later told DR it would consider an external investigation. In a response to the 48 doctors, dean Bente Merete Stallknecht and institute director Ian D. Hickson wrote that even a thorough, independent study would not provide certainty about any potential link.

Blockmann called the response “disappointing,” noting that several signatories knew the four affected individuals personally. “Four young people, three of whom have died, at a horribly young age—how can this not be a red flag?” she said.

Johnni Hansen, a workplace environment researcher at the Danish Cancer Society, told DR the university has a responsibility to investigate how many former employees fell ill, not just during the 10-year period when the four worked there but over several decades. The university has previously stated it lacks data from earlier years.

Høyrup said the list was intended as a starting point for the university’s own investigation. “We’ve handed this to them on a silver platter. Now we’re left with a flat refusal,” she said.