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Safety at Work

Worker wearing a helmet with ear protection, goggles and gloves

This is the 2007 draft on work safety. You will get the newest version here.

Employees need occupational safety to keep their health and capacity to work.

Affected people and foundations of life: 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, etc. (and so on) 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. (WHO [World Health Organization] 2002, 75.)

Deaths: about 1 million deaths per year by occupational injuries, diseases, or toxification (e. g. [for example] by airborne particulates or lead exposure; WHO 2004a, 2146).

Loss of healthy life-years:

  • injuries: 13.1 million healthy life-years (DALYs [Disability-adjusted life years]) annually
  • noise: 4.15 million DALYs annually
  • airborne particulates: 3.04 million DALYs annually
  • carcinogens: 1.42 million DALYs annually
  • ergonomic stressors: 0.818 million DALYs annually (WHO 2002, 226).

Targets/goals: no international target.

Trend: ? no 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

Draft (2007)

Photo credit: © BMU/Oberhäuser