In the early 1900s, benzene was widely used as an industrial solvent and through the appearance of multiple reports in the literature of anemia, pancytopenia, and leukemia, its toxicity to the blood and bone marrow quickly became manifest. French investigators were the first to report a case of lymphoma associated with benzene exposure in 1947 (1). Similar reports emerged in the 1960s from France, Italy, and Spain. Studies in Turkish shoe workers by Aksoy and others in the 1970s and 1980s were instrumental in establishing the relationship between benzene and leukemia, but these studies also identified 11 cases of lymphoma associated with occupational benzene exposure (2). They concluded that benzene could cause a variety of hematologic and lymphatic malignancies, in addition to damaging the bone marrow.