What is occupational health?

We can improve the workplaces!

When you work with ‘Occupational health’, the main purpose is to avoid and reduce the effect of factors at work that may cause adverse health effects or injuries among the workers.

We can reduce the occurrence of injuries at the workplaces

You have listened to a construction worker talking about dangerous situations at work at a building site in a previous step. It is easy to understand that accidents can occur during this type of work. Unfortunately, dangerous situations may happen in several other types of industries as well. However, the risk of accidents can be reduced by work with health and safety, to reduce the risk of accidents and prevent injuries. Over time this can give fantastic results, like illustrated here in a figure showing the decrease in injury rates in the US private industry 1972-2018:

Occupational injuries are reduced in numbers in US

Another example of similar good statistics are seen in data from South Africa. The figure below shows that the number of injuries in the industry there has clearly decreased over a period of 20 years. This is the result of a good surveillance system and focus on injury prevention in this country (Rikhotso O et al, 2022). Click on the link below and see the reduction in occupational injury rate decreases!

Occupational injuries in South Africa 2001 – 2019

As you see here, the curve is not smooth, it has an increase in the injury rate in 2013. This might be caused by an increase in employment numbers from agriculture, transport and construction industry.

A general comment regarding interpretation of occupational injury statistics: Increasing injury rates are not necessarily caused by any actual increase in injuries. An increase in injury rates may also occur due to a change of practice in reporting routines in the industry/country. If reporting routines are improved, this may lead to higher injury rates than before.

Occupational health definition

Occupational health is defined by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) as an area of work in public health to promote and maintain highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations. This means that the field of Occupational Health covers a wide area. The topic should be included in public health programs in all countries.

A definition of occupational health is:
The promotion and maintenance
of the highest degree of physical
mental and social well-being of
workers in all occupations.

The size of the problem

About 2.9 million people die
from work-related diseases every year

Every 15 seconds, a worker dies from
a work-related accident or disease

Every 15 seconds, 153 workers have
a work-related accident

Worldwide, occupational injuries and diseases continue to be the leading cause of work-related deaths. The situation is unacceptable.

Occupational diseases can also be prevented

Occupational injuries is a challenge, but in the present course you will also learn about several factors at work that may cause diseases among the workers. Chemicals, noise, vibration, infectious agents, physical strain and mental stress are some of the factors causing occupational diseases. One of our main messages is that such diseases can be prevented! An example is exposure to dust. Different types of dust occur in many industries, examples are mining, cement production, production of coffee, paper and food. The different dust types can cause different types of respiratory symptoms and diseases. Asthma and obstructive lung diseases are serious diseases that we want to avoid developing. Knowledge about the dust exposure and how to reduce this exposure is important. You will learn more about this later in the course, but technical solutions, ventilation and personal protective equipment are among the solutions used to reduce the dust exposure of workers. For instance, in a cement factory in Tanzania, the dust levels have been significantly reduced due to technical improvements. Earlier, the factory produced not only cement, but also patients with obstructive lung disease! After the technical improvements, leading to low dust levels, there are no new obstructive lung disease patients caused by work at this factory. This is success in occupational health!

Cement factories can be very dusty, which you can see in this photo.