Safety and health at work
April 2009

The efforts in this field should be relentless, multilevel and aiming at minimizing all risks for profession related diseases, accidents, inability and death.

Unfortunately the situation as it is today causes great concern. In spite of many decades of work both nationally and internationally by relevant organisms such as the International Labor Organism (ILO) the burden of suffering caused on working people by profession related factors is particularly heavy.

The statistics provided by ILO on what happens globally reveal a very sad situation:

1. Each day, an average of 6,000 people die as a result of work-related accidents or diseases, totaling more than 2.2 million work-related deaths a year. Of these, about 350,000 deaths are from workplace accidents and more than 1.7 million are from work-related diseases. In addition, commuting accidents increase the burden with another 158,000 fatal accidents.
    
2. Each year, workers suffer approximately 270 million occupational accidents that lead to absences from work for 3 days or more, and fall victim to some 160 million incidents of work related disease.
    
3. Approximately 4% of the world’s gross domestic product is lost with the cost of injury, death and disease through absence from work, sickness treatment, disability and survivor benefits.
    
4. Hazardous substances kill about 438,000 workers annually, and 10% of all skin cancers are estimated to be attributable to workplace exposure to hazardous substances.
    
5. Asbestos alone claims about 100,000 deaths every year and the figure is rising annually. Although global production of asbestos has fallen since the 1970s, increasing numbers of workers in the USA, Canada, UK, Germany and other industrialized countries are now dying from past exposure to asbestos dust.
    
6. Silicosis – a fatal lung disease caused by exposure to silica dust – still affects tens of millions of workers around the world. In Latin America, 37% of miners have some degree of the disease, rising to 50% among miners aged over 50. In India, over 50% of slate pencil workers and 36% of stonecutters have silicosis.

Experience has shown that a preventative safety culture is beneficial for workers, employers and governments alike. Various prevention techniques have proven themselves effective, both in avoiding workplace accidents and illnesses and improving business performance.

Today’s high safety standards in some countries are a direct result of long-term policies encouraging tripartite social dialogue, collective bargaining between trade unions and employers, and effective health and safety legislation backed by strong labor inspection.

Since 2003, the ILO observes The World Day for Safety and Health calling for the prevention of accidents and illnesses at work, and capitalizing on the ILO’s traditional strengths of tripartism and social dialogue. The World Day remains a significant platform to raise awareness on how to make work safe and healthy whilst attracting political commitment. It is supported by the International Social Security Association. The April theme of the 2008-2009 ILO campaign on “Gender equality at the heart of Decent Work” is “Occupational Safety and Health from a gender perspective”.

The ILO has always addressed safety and health at work. Some of the first international labor standards, even dating from 1919, responded to concerns in this field. As the ILO celebrates its 90th anniversary, around 70 international labour standards deal with safety and health at work.

Workers and employers need to be made aware of the risks that they face, and how to manage them. But health and safety bodies in the individual EU Member States cannot do this alone.

A preventative safety and health culture comprises all the values, managerial systems and practices, participatory principles and working behavior conducive to creating a safe and healthy working environment. The ILO’s Occupational Safety and Health
Convention, 1981 (No. 155) provides a suitable framework supporting a safety and health culture at work. Meanwhile, government labour inspectors have a pivotal role. More than 130 member States have ratified the Labour Inspection Convention, 1947 (No. 81), making it one of the most ratified instruments of the organization.

While the development of a safety culture begins during a child’s early education years, the effective prevention of occupational accidents and diseases begins at the enterprise level. Prevention involves participation from governments and workers’ and employers’ organizations. Implementation of work organization procedures, the provision of training and information to workers and inspection activities are important tools to promote a safety and health culture.

Companies with occupational safety and health and management systems have good records both in safety and productivity.  

Bibliography

1. International Labour Organization (ILO)
2. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
3. Occupational and Environmental Medicine
4. World Health Organization
5. The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine