The Global Burden of Occupational Disease (original) (raw)
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The global burden of selected occupational diseases and injury risks: Methodology and summary
American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2005
Background Around the globe, work has a heavy impact on health. To better advise policy makers, we assessed the global burden of disease and injury due to selected occupational hazards. This article presents an overview, and describes the methodology employed in the companion studies. Methods Using the World Health Organization (WHO) Comparative Risk Assessment methodology, we applied relative risk measures to the proportions of the population exposed to selected occupational hazards to estimate attributable fractions, deaths, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Numerous occupational risk factors had to be excluded due to inadequate global data. Results In 2000, the selected risk factors were responsible worldwide for 37% of back pain, 16% of hearing loss, 13% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), 11% of asthma, 8% of injuries, 9% of lung cancer, and 2% of leukemia. These risks at work caused 850,000 deaths worldwide and resulted in the loss of about 24 million years of healthy life. Needlesticks accounted for about 40% of Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C infections and 4.4% of HIV infections in health care workers. Conclusions Exposure to occupational hazards accounts for a significant proportion of the global burden of disease and injury, which could be substantially reduced through application of proven risk prevention strategies.
Review of estimates of the global burden of injury and illness due to occupational exposures
American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2005
Background Over the last decade, there have been several attempts to estimate the global burden of ill health due to work activity. The most recent of these is the Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA) project of the World Health Organization. Methods Published estimates of global burden of injury and disease due to occupational factors were summarised, compared and contrasted, with the aim of putting the CRA estimates into context, identifying the most reliable and appropriate estimate for total burden due to occupational risks, and making recommendations regarding future work. Results The best estimate of global work-related deaths of workers is approximately two million per year, with disease responsible for the vast majority of these, but even this is likely to be a considerable underestimate of the true number of deaths because of shortcomings in the available data. Conclusions The CRA estimates of burden due to individual risk factors appear appropriate for the limited number of exposures and conditions included, but are a major underestimate of the overall number of work-related deaths at a global level due to exclusion of risk factors because of data limitations. Improvements in global estimates are likely to come from the use of different methodologies and improvements in the availability and use of local data.
Contribution of occupational risk factors to the global burden of disease
The World Health Organization conducted a comparative risk assessment to ascertain the contributions of 26 risk factors to the global burden of disease. Five occupational risk factors accounted for an estimated 37% of back pain, 16% of hearing loss, 13% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 11% of asthma, 9% of lung cancer, 8% of injuries, and 2% of leukemia worldwide. Virtually all cases of silicosis, asbestosis, and coal workers’ pneumoconiosis were work-related. Contaminated sharps injuries accounted for 40% of hepatitis B, 40% of hepatitis C, and 4% of HIV/AIDS infections among health care workers. Data limitations, primarily in developing countries, prevented the inclusion of other major occupational risk factors. These selected occupational risks accounted for about 850 000 deaths and 24 million years of healthy life lost each year. The deaths due to these selected occupational risk factors constitute only 43% of the International Labour Organization’s estimate of 2 millio...
Contribution of occupational risk factors to the global burden of disease-a summary of findings
Scandinavian Journal of …, 2005
The World Health Organization (WHO) hosts an ongoing Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project that provides the most comprehensive and consistent estimates of mortality and morbidity for more than 135 causes of disease and injury. In its recent comparative risk assessment, WHO conducted an analysis, in a unified framework, of 26 major health risk factors contributing to the overall global burden of disease and injury (2, 3). The following seven major categories of risk factors were included: childhood and maternal undernutrition, other diet-related risk factors and
Global Estimates of Occupational Accidents and Fatal Work
2010
Recording occupational accidents and occupational diseases is one of the central demands for good occupational health and safety. Western industrial countries have already for a long time recorded their occupational accidents and occupational diseases, but the established practices of recording differ from country to country. In many developing countries the recording of occupational accidents and diseases has only recently been established or is still absent. Variation in recording due to, e.g. differences in definitions and branch of compensation system is challenging in terms of understanding recorded cases. In addition, work-related diseases are typically excluded from the recording system. Work-related diseases are diseases caused by work, at least partly, but not classified as occupational diseases. For example, musculoskeletal disorders, mental diseases and occupational cancers have received increasing interest. Occupational accidents and work-related diseases are a worldwide problem. They cause a lot of suffering and losses for the individual, organisation, community and society. Statistics of occupational accidents and work-related diseases are needed for prevention work at the enterprise and nation level. Statistics help to focus on specific areas and affect political decision-making. Especially increasing awareness in developing countries and directing limited resources to the right places is easier. The objective of this doctoral thesis was to develop models to estimate the global number of occupational accidents and fatal work-related diseases. The study was done in three parts: the initial study and two update studies. The first one was carried out in 2001-2002. It concentrated on creating a model to estimate the number of occupational accidents for the year 1998 and fatal work-related diseases for the year 2000. The second (2003-2004) and the third (2005-2006) studies were more like update studies. The methods used in these update studies were the same as in the first study to keep the estimated numbers comparable. The number of occupational accidents was calculated for the years 2001 and 2003 as well as the number of fatal work-related diseases for the year 2002. In the second update study fatal work-related diseases figures were given for the first time by country level. In the world approximately 2.3 million deaths occur every year because of occupational accidents and work-related diseases. It means that over 6,000 workers die every day because of their work. There were 330 million non-fatal accidents causing at least four days absence from work during one year. Deaths have remained quite the same during a five year PREFACE My doctoral thesis was like a triathlon which includes three parts done quite separately: three research projects done for the International Labour Organization (ILO), six scientific review articles and the summary of my thesis. The time I used to this academic triathlon was not the world record, partly because I used time also for interesting bypaths. These bypaths helped me better to understand the general view of the theme and to assess methods and results. I would like to thank Professor Kaija Leena Saarela for guiding and supporting me during this process. Especially I am grateful for Kaija Leena that she trusted me and gave me the most interesting research I have ever done and which I have not yet get tired. I am also grateful for Dr., Docent Jukka Takala who gave this project for our unit, who supervised and supported me during this long process. Dr., Docent Hannu Tarvainen and Dr. Tuula Räsänen I would like to thank for the time they used to examine this thesis and ensured that the demands of the doctoral thesis are fulfilled. I have had in luck to work on an environment, where I have met such nice people. I would like to thank my present and former colleagues. Especially discussions with Professor Jouni Kivistö-Rahnasto, Ms. Noora Nenonen M.Sc., Ms. Sanna Nenonen M.Sc. and Mr. Pertti Palukka M.Sc. have taken my work forward. What would I have done without Ms. Heli Kiviranta during these years; thank you for everything. I would like to acknowledge the ILO department of Programme on Safety and Health at Work and the Environment (SAFEWORK), Academy of Finland and Tampere University of Technology for funding. I would also like to thank the Finnish Work Environment Fund for giving me a scholarship which gave me the possibility to work as a part time and wrote articles. Also financial support from Finnish Doctoral Program in Industrial Engineering and Management gave me possibility to write summary and finalise my thesis. I would like to thank my parents Maija and Jarke, my sister Outi and my brother Pete. They trusted me and brought me down to earth. They also taught me that I cannot always be right. My loving thanks for my husband Jari, who always knew that I got this thesis ready even it took time. My daughter Siiri and sons Eero and Aapo, now it is over.
New and Emerging Risk Factors in Occupational Health
Applied Sciences
Workplace health and safety is constantly evolving both in developed and developing countries. Under the tumultuous development of technology, working environments are changing, leading to the onset of new occupational hazards and unprecedented risk conditions deriving from the new ways of organizing work. At the same time, progress in medical science, with the knowledge in the fields of genetics, metabolomics, big data, and smart technologies, makes it possible to promptly identify and treat risk conditions that would have escaped notice in the past. Personalized occupational medicine represents the frontier of prevention in the workplace, from the perspective of total worker health and the sustainability of resources. The contributions to this Special Issue range from chemical, physical, and biological to psychosocial risks, and from the search for new ways to control long-known risks, such as mercury toxicity, to observations of the most frequent pathologies in the workplace in t...
The list of occupational diseases established in the international and national legal system has played important roles in both prevention of and compensation for workers' diseases. This report reviewed the historical development in the ILO list of occupational diseases and suggested implications of the trends. Since the first establishment of the ILO list of occupational diseases in 1925, the list has played a key role in harmonizing the development of policies on occupational diseases at the international level. The three occupational diseases (anthrax, lead poisoning, and mercury poisoning) in the first ILO list of occupational diseases, set up in 1925 as workmen's compensation convention represented an increase of occupational diseases from the Industrial Revolution. Until the 1960s, 10 occupational diseases had been representative compensable occupational diseases listed in Convention No. 121, which implies that occupational diseases in this era were equated to industrial poisoning. Since 1980, with advancements in diagnostic techniques and medical science, noise-induced hearing loss, and several bronchopulmonary diseases have been incorporated into the ILO occupational list. Since 2002, changes in the structure of industries, emerging new chemicals, and advanced national worker's compensation schemes have provoked the ILO to revise the occupational disease list. A new format of ILO list appended in Recommendation 194 (R194) was composed of two dimensions (causes and diseases) and subcategories. Among 50 member states that had provided their national lists of occupational diseases, until 2012 thirty countries were found to have the list occupational diseases having similar structure to ILO list in R194.