OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH PRACTICE

Occupational Health Practice

Occupational Health Practice

The right to health at work

Most of the world's population (58%) spend one-third of their adult life at work contributing actively to the development and well-being of themselves, their families and of society. Work may have both a positive or an adverse effect on the health of the worker. In the most favourable circumstances work provides the income and material outputs for meeting the necessities of life and also has a positive impact on social, psychological and physical health and well-being. At the same time, a high level of occupational health and safety contributes to the achievement of material and economic objectives and provides high quality and performance in working life. In spite of this, conditions at work and in the work environment for many occupations and in many countries still involve a distinct and even severe hazard to health that reduces the well-being, working capacity and even the life span of working individuals.

Conditions of work and the work environment may have either a positive or hazardous impact on health and well-being. Ability to participate in the working life opens the individual possibilities to carry out economically independent life, develop his or her working skills and social contacts. One-third of adult life is spent at work where the economic and material values of society are generated. On the other hand, dangerous exposures and loads are often several times greater in the workplace than in any other environment with adverse consequences on health. The officially registered working population constitutes 60-70% of the adult male and 30-60% of the adult female population of the world. When work at home and informal work are taken into consideration the percentage is even higher.

In unfavourable cases the levels and intensities of hazardous exposures may be 10 or even 1000 times greater at work than elsewhere. Workers in the highest risk industries such as mining, forestry, construction and agriculture are often at an unreasonably high risk and one-fifth to one-third may suffer occupational injury or disease annually, leading in extreme cases to high prevalences of work disability and even to premature death. Less dramatic but well-defined occupational health problems also prevail in service and office occupations where psychological stressors and ergonomic problems often increase the workload, cause job dissatisfaction and affect health and productivity.

On the other hand, a number of studies have provided convincing evidence of a positive association between health, well-being, well-organized work and a healthy work environment where safety and health are considered and where conditions conducive to one's professional and social development are provided. It is universally accepted and confirmed in several documents by the United Nations, The WHO Global Strategy for Health for All by the Year 2000, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and others that every citizen of the world has a right to healthy and safe work and to a work environment that enables him or her to live a socially and economically productive life.

Virtually all countries are still far from this ...