Main content:
Safety at Work
Employees need occupational safety to keep their health and capacity to work.
Affected people and foundations of life: There were about 268 million occupational accidents and 160 million victims of work-related illnesses in 2001 (
2005, 3, 7, 1). During their working lives globally 20-30% of the male and 5-20% of the female working-age population are exposed to lung carcinogens, like asbestos, arsenic, cadmium, diesel exhaust, Worldwide 10% of cancer of the lung, trachea and bronchus can be attributed to occupational exposures. Millions of workers in mining, construction etc. are exposed to microscopic airborne particles of silica, asbestos and coal dust. ( 2002, 75.)Deaths: about 2.2 million by work-related diseases or accidents in 2001 (ILO 2005, 3, 7, 1).
Loss of healthy life-years:
- injuries: 13.1 million healthy life-years ( ) in 2000
- noise: 4.15 million DALYs in 2000
- airborne particulates: 3.04 million DALYs in 2000
- carcinogens: 1.42 million DALYs in 2000
- ergonomic stressors: 0.818 million DALYs in 2000 (WHO 2002, 226).
Targets/goals: no international target.
Trend: ? no summarizing trend data available.
Measures: Occupational cancers are entirely preventable through hygiene measures, substitution of safer materials, enclosure of processes, and ventilation (WHO 2002, 75).
Annotations
DALYs: Disability-adjusted life years.
One DALY represents the loss of one year of equivalent full health. DALYs are the sum of the years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLL) in the population and the years lost due to disability (YLD) for incident cases of the health condition. (WHO 2004, 95f.)
Sources
- ILO 2005 – International Labour Organization: World Day for Safety and Health at Work 2005: A Background Paper.
- WHO 2002 – World Health Organization: The World Health Report 2002 – Reducing Risks, Promoting Healthy Life.
- WHO 2004 – World Health Organization: WHO Report 2004.
Draft (2008)
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