An ABC news team in Australia abandoned its Brisbane radio studio yesterday after an investigation revealed there is something about the workplace causing breast cancer.

It's not clear what the cause may be, but the five-month-long investigation concluded a breast cancer cluster is related to the office environment.

Twelve women who worked at the Brisbane Toowong office had been diagnosed with breast cancer over the past 11 years. Eight of these women worked in the newsroom. Most had been there for more than five years.

ABC managing editor Mark Scott would not move his staff earlier this year when 100 staff members walked off the job in July, demanding relocation. He said it would take evidence -- not just suspicion -- of a breast cancer cluster for him to agree to relocation. Now he has evidence.

The investigation report shows women who worked at this office reported breast cancer at a rate 11 times higher than the general working community.

In addition to the relocation, all female staff at Toowong office were offered free mammograms and free counseling services during the investigation. Yesterday, Scott extended the offer to women at other ABC sites in Australia.

In 11 years, ABC management is claiming that nine women from the Brisbane Toowong studios have been diagnosed with breast cancer. A Brisbane law firm is claiming as many as 12 women have been diagnosed with breast cancer. Either way, the staff and journalists have come to the conclusion they are working in the midst of a cancer cluster and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance union who represents them wants the offices relocated by the end of next week. In the meantime, the union does not believe any of the staff should be forced to return to work until the offices are relocated.

But ABC management is saying independent surveys have shown there is no link between the incidence of breast cancer and the workplace. When Queensland Health investigated, they called the high incidence of breast cancer cases excessive, but stopped short of calling the circumstances the result of a cancer cluster. Let's see. The mother of two in her early 30s -- who was forced to undergo a mastectomy last week -- was the 12th woman to be diagnosed with breast cancer -- and the seventh to work in the same room at the Toowong studios.

What is the distinction made by Queensland Health, between cancer excess and cancer cluster? Would you continue working in an environment where a high number of cancer cases seem to be keep occurring?

Ian Copeland, music booking agent who represented acts like Joan Jett, R.E.M., Squeeze, The Police, B-52s, Ramones, and the Cure; who wrote Wild Thing, and was brother to Police drummer Stewart Copeland, has lost his life to skin cancer.

Copeland wrote his autobiographical memoir, Wild Thing: The Backstage, on the Road, in the Studio, Off the Charts Memoirs of Ian Copeland, chronicling his early life as the son of a father who was both jazz musician and CIA intelligence officer and a mother who was both spy and archeologist -- to his wild adventures as a rock music agent. He spent most of his adult life working in the music industry.

"Everybody has always said my brother Ian would have been a more charismatic rock star than anybody he has ever represented," Stewart Copeland told People magazine in 1995. "But instead of shouting to a sea of faces, he'd much rather sit at the dinner table and regale everybody personally." Copeland was 57.

Photo: Ian Copeland (left) with brothers Stewart (centre) and Miles (right)