Global Burden of Disease and Injury Due to Occupational Factors (original) (raw)
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The work-relatedness of disease: workers' own assessment
Sociology of Health and Illness, 1992
In the routine compilation of statistics on the relation between occupation and ill-health it is usually possible to demonstrate links to certain physically demanding occupations. However, studies of the causal links between work and ill-health present problems. Besides the difficulties that often occur in collecting information on present and previous occupations, exposure periods, latency, duration, etc, the analysis and interpretations themselves are complicated.
Global Estimates of the Burden of Injury and Illness at Work in 2012
Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 2014
This article reviews the present indicators, trends, and recent solutions and strategies to tackle major global and country problems in safety and health at work. The article is based on the Yant Award Lecture of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) at its 2013 Congress. We reviewed employment figures, mortality rates, occupational burden of disease and injuries, reported accidents, surveys on self-reported occupational illnesses and injuries, attributable fractions, national economic cost estimates of work-related injuries and ill health, and the most recent information on the problems from published papers, documents, and electronic data sources of international and regional organizations, in particular the International Labor Organization (ILO), World Health Organization (WHO), and European Union (EU), institutions, agencies, and public websites. We identified and analyzed successful solutions, programs, and strategies to reduce the work-related negative outcomes at various levels. Work-related illnesses that have a long latency period and are linked to ageing are clearly on the increase, while the number of occupational injuries has gone down in industrialized countries thanks to both better prevention and structural changes. We have estimated that globally there are 2.3 million deaths annually for reasons attributed to work. The biggest component is linked to work-related diseases, 2.0 million, and 0.3 million linked to occupational injuries. However, the division of these two factors varies depending on the level of development. In industrialized countries the share of deaths caused by occupational injuries and work-related communicable diseases is very low while non-communicable diseases are the overwhelming causes in those countries. Economic costs of work-related injury and illness vary between 1.8 and 6.0% of GDP in country estimates, the average being 4% according to the ILO. Singapore's economic costs were estimated to be equivalent to 3.2% of GDP based on a preliminary study. If economic losses would take into account involuntary early retirement then costs may be considerably higher, for example, in Finland up to 15% of GDP, while this estimate covers various disorders where work and working conditions may be just one factor of many or where work may aggravate the disease, injury, or disorders, such as traffic injuries, mental disorders, alcoholism, and genetically induced problems. Workplace health promotion, services, and safety and health management, however, may have a major preventive impact on those as well. Leadership and management at all levels, and engagement of workers are key issues in changing the workplace culture. Vision Zero is a useful concept and philosophy in gradually eliminating any harm at work. Legal and enforcement measures that themselves support companies and organizations need to be supplemented with economic justification and convincing arguments to reduce corner-cutting in risk management, and to avoid short-and long-term disabilities, premature retirement, and corporate closures due to mismanagement and poor and unsustainable work life. We consider that a new paradigm is needed where good work is not just considered a daily activity. We need to foster stable conditions and circumstances and sustainable work life where the objective is to maintain your health and work ability beyond the legal retirement age. We need safe and healthy work, for life.
Occupation, morbidity, and hospital admission
2011
Introduction: The Occupational Hospitalization Register (OHR) is an ongoing register for research and surveillance established by the National Research Centre for the Working Environment in the 1980s. This review puts in perspective the contributions from the OHR to the understanding of relation between work and the burden of diseases in general and circulatory disease in particular. Research topics: This review covers selected topics in which studies based on OHR has contributed to the scientific knowledge during more than two decades. One PhD thesis and so far 49 OHR studies have contributed to the estimation of the excess fraction of several diseases attributable to work and to the identification of relative risks for occupational diseases like circulatory diseases, diseases of the nervous system, musculoskeletal disorders, pulmonary disease, infertility, and recently also mental disorders. Conclusion: OHR is a cost-effective instrument for surveillance of health consequences of the working environment and social conditions as well as a valuable register for ad-hoc studies of the aetiology of occupational diseases.
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.
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.
Journal of Occupational Health, 2003
Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India-This study assessed the associations of job and some individual factors with occupational injuries among employed people from a general population in north-eastern France; 2,562 workers were randomly selected from the working population. A mailed auto-questionnaire was filled in by each subject. Statistical analysis was performed with loglinear models. The annual incidence rate of at least one occupational injury was 4.45%. Significant contributing factors for occupational injuries were job category (60.8%), sex (16.2%), regular psychotropic drug use (8.5%), age groups (7.5%), and presence of a disease (7.0%). The men had higher risk than the women (adjusted odds-ratio 1.99, 95% CI 1.43-2.78). Compared to executives, intellectual professionals and teachers, labourers had the highest risk (6.40, 3.55-11.52). They were followed by farmers, craftsmen and tradesmen (6.18, 2.86-13.08), technicians (3.14, 1.41-6.70), employees (2.94, 1.59-5.48) and other subjects (3.87, 1.90-7.88). The young (≤29 yr) showed an increased risk. Similar odds-ratios were observed for regular psychotropic drug use (1.54, 1.16-2.05) and the presence of a disease (1.50, 1.11-2.02). Univariate analysis showed that smoking habit, overweight and excess alcohol use were also associated with injuries. The loglinear model results showed that there were associations between some of these independent factors. It was concluded that job, sex, young age, smoking habit, excess alcohol use, overweight, psychotropic drug use, and disease influenced the occupational injuries. Preventive measures concerning work conditions, risk assessment and job knowledge should be conducted in overall active population, especially in men, young workers, smokers, alcohol users, overweight workers and in individuals with a disease or psychosomatic disorders. (J Occup Health 2003; 45: 382-391)
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.