FEATURE
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
Steve Perkins, chief executive of BOHS, the Chartered Society for Worker Health Protection, sounds a wake up call to the industry: it’s time to fight occupational disease.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) estimates that 13,000 people die every year in the UK from occupational diseases. In 2013/14, 133 people died in accidents at work. However, 99% of work-related deaths are from ill health while 1% are from accidents.
Occupational health has been side- lined for decades, to the point where ‘health and safety’ actually means ‘safety’. There’s a political and practical explanation for this: safety management brings simple, quick and measurable improvements. Safety hazards are easier to appreciate and harm is immediate.
Health risks are less visible and disease develops over time. Safety risks are usually easier to eliminate while exposure to health hazards has first to be quantified and qualified. Many safety risks can be controlled using the same or similar measures, whereas a one size fits all approach doesn’t usually work for health risks where a hierarchy of controls, often bespoke, needs to be considered.
In the UK, we’ve done a great and necessary job to improve workplace safety, but now the effort needs to be on preventing and controlling health risks. To do this, those who lead must understand the breadth of the disciplines and practices involved in occupational health.
OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH:
A BALANCING ACT There are three sides of occupational health. First, the clinical side focuses on cure rather than prevention, and is mainly the province of occupational health nurses and medics. It’s what most people think of as ‘occupational health’.
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The preventative side - how we stop people being exposed to health hazards in the first place, a.k.a. occupational hygiene - is based on science and engineering, and has gone under the radar for a century too long, hence the continuing burden of occupational disease.
Third, there is wellbeing – increasingly brought to the fore, as its association with public health means it has gained political and media traction. Clearly, keeping people fit to work ultimately reduces the public costs of health and welfare. Wellbeing initiatives are, of course, a good thing.
But wellbeing is now in danger of dominating the business agenda, leading to a loud but narrow focus on healthy eating and exercise at the expense of the control of serious and often deadly workplace health risks that the employer has created – and, by the way, by law is required to control.
The balance between these three overlapping areas needs recalibrating.
BOHS, as the Chartered Society for Worker Health Protection, aims to raise awareness of occupational hygiene and the benefits it can provide to companies, not least in helping with control, compliance, and competence.
BREATHE FREELY A recently launched initiative, Breathe Freely - led by BOHS in collaboration with Constructing Better Health, Land Securities, Mace and HSE - has the long-term aim to prevent lung disease in construction workers. With the backing of national and international construction partners, key messages, information and signposting to advice and expertise on effective exposure control will spread from the industry’s
influencers and leaders and cascade down to the managers, supervisors and operators on the ground.
Construction has historically been one of the sickest industries: its workers face health risks all the time because their everyday tasks - like cutting, drilling, demolition, driving, mixing, painting, cleaning, soldering, and welding - use or generate substances that are hazardous to health. Exposure to diesel exhaust fumes, silica dust, wood and other dusts, asbestos, welding fume, solder fume, Legionella and other biological agents, solvents, isocyanates, epoxy and other resin vapours and mists are all known causes of respiratory diseases.
The starting point is knowing that occupational ill health and disease are preventable, that solutions do exist, and that enlightened best practice must be openly shared.
The challenge for all industries for tomorrow’s health and safety is to take this as seriously as we at BOHS know it should be taken. Let’s really start treating health like safety in the UK.
www.bohs.org
FEATURE | TOMORROW’S HEALTH & SAFETY YEARBOOK 2015/16
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