Occupational safety and health

Occupational safety and health (OSH) or occupational health and safety (OHS) is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at work (i.e., while performing duties required by one's occupation). OSH is related to the fields of occupational medicine and occupational hygiene and aligns with workplace health promotion initiatives. OSH also protects all the general public who may be affected by the occupational environment. According to the official estimates of the United Nations, the WHO/ILO Joint Estimate of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury, almost 2 million people die each year due to exposure to occupational risk factors. Globally, more than 2.78 million people die annually as a result of workplace-related accidents or diseases, corresponding to one death every fifteen seconds. There are an additional 374 million non-fatal work-related injuries annually. It is estimated that the economic burden of occupational-related injury and death is nearly four per cent of the global gross domestic product each year. The human cost of this adversity is enormous. In common-law jurisdictions, employers have the common law duty (also called duty of care) to take reasonable care of the safety of their employees. Statute law may, in addition, impose other general duties, introduce specific duties, and create government bodies with powers to regulate occupational safety issues. Details of this vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Prevention of workplace incidents and occupational diseases is addressed through the implementation of occupational safety and health programs at company level.

Definitions The International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) share a common definition of occupational health. It was first adopted by the Joint ILO/WHO Committee on Occupational Health at its first session in 1950:

Occupational health should aim at the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations; the prevention amongst workers of departures from health caused by their working conditions; the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health; the placing and maintenance of the worker in an occupational environment adapted to his physiological and psychological capabilities and; to summarize: the adaptation of work to man and of each man to his job. In 1995, a consensus statement was added:

Occupational health focuses on three different objectives: (i) the maintenance and promotion of workers' health and working capacity; (ii) the improvement of working environment and work to become conducive to safety and health and (iii) development of work organizations and working cultures in a direction which supports health and safety at work and in doing so also promotes a positive social climate and smooth operation and may enhance productivity of the undertakings. The concept of working culture is intended in this context to mean a reflection of the essential value systems adopted by the undertaking concerned. Such a culture is reflected in practice in the managerial systems, personnel policy, principles for participation, training policies and quality management of the undertaking.An alternative definition for occupational health given by the WHO is: "occupational health deals with all aspects of health and safety in the workplace and has a strong focus on primary prevention of hazards." The expression "occupational health", as originally adopted by the WHO and the ILO, refers to both short- and long-term adverse health effects. In more recent times, the expressions "occupational safety and health" and "occupational health and safety" have come into use (and have also been adopted in works by the ILO), based on the general understanding that occupational health refers to hazards associated to disease and long-term effects, while occupational safety hazards are those associated to work accidents causing injury and sudden severe conditions.

History Research and regulation of occupational safety and health are a relatively recent phenomenon. As labor movements arose in response to worker concerns in the wake of the industrial revolution, workers' safety and health entered consideration as a labor-related issue.

Beginnings

Written works on occupational diseases began to appear by the end of the 15th century, when demand for gold and silver was rising due to the increase in trade and iron, copper, and lead were also in demand from the nascent firearms market. Deeper mining became common as a consequence. In 1473, Ulrich Ellenbog, a German physician, wrote a short treatise On the Poisonous Wicked Fumes and Smokes, focused on coal, nitric acid, lead, and mercury fumes encountered by metal workers and goldsmiths. In 1587, Paracelsus (1493–1541) published the first work on the mine and smelter workers diseases. In it, he gave accounts of miners' "lung sickness". In 1526, Georgius Agricola's (1494–1553) De re metallica, a treatise on metallurgy, described accidents and diseases prevalent among miners and recommended practices to prevent them. Like Paracelsus, Agricola mentioned the dust that "eats away the lungs, and implants consumption." The seeds of state intervention to correct social ills were sown during the reign of Elizabeth I by the Poor Laws, which originated in attempts to alleviate hardship arising from widespread poverty. While they were perhaps more to do with a need to contain unrest than morally motivated, they were significant in transferring responsibility for helping the needy from private hands to the state. In 1713, Bernardino Ramazzini (1633–1714), often described as the father of occupational medicine and a precursor to occupational health, published his De morbis artificum diatriba (Dissertation on Workers' Diseases), which outlined the health hazards of chemicals, dust, metals, repetitive or violent motions, odd postures, and other disease-causative agents encountered by workers in more than fifty occupations. It was the first broad-ranging presentation of occupational diseases. Percivall Pott (1714–1788), an English surgeon, described cancer in chimney sweeps (chimney sweeps' carcinoma), the first recognition of an occupational cancer in history.

The Industrial Revolution in Britain

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