The World Day for Safety and Health at Work aims to promote the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases, and stress the need to address emerging risks at work effectively and in a timely manner. Occupational safety and health is an essential aspect of decent work. Indeed, it was recognized in 2022 as a Fundamental Principle and Right at Work. From the 191 ILO Conventions existing to date, 10 are Fundamental. These Fundamental Conventions include two related to occupational safety and health: the Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 1981 (Convention No. 155, entered into force in 1983 and ratified by 83 countries to date), and the Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 2006 (Convention No. 187, entered into force in 2009, ratified by 69 countries to date).
Occupational safety and health is recognized as a key element of wellbeing and development both in the Decent Work Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. In fact, in SDG target 8.8, the international community has vowed to “protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment”.
However, despite these high-level commitments to ensuring the occupational safety and health of all workers, too many preventable work accidents still happen, too many occupational risks still grow unchecked, and too many workers still succumb to occupational diseases. Accelerating and scaling up the efforts requires reliable and detailed statistics to inform targeted policies and initiatives, but occupational safety and health statistics are nothing short of challenging.
Work accidents, injuries, and diseases in the world
Sadly, too many preventable work accidents still take place around the world. Despite targeted initiatives by some governments and international organizations including the ILO, workers around the world are still exposed to undue risks in their workplaces and work accidents are still far too common. Work-related risks include physical safety, biological hazards, chemicals and hazardous substances and ergonomic and psychosocial hazards. Occupational injuries and diseases are an affront to decent work evidencing a lack of occupational safety and health. Unlike occupational injuries, which result from a work accident, occupational diseases result from the prolonged exposure to risk factors arising from the work activity, with possibly long lags between the exposure to risk factors and the manifestation of the disease.
According to latest ILO global estimates, in 2019 around 2.93 million workers died from work-related factors. Most of these work-related deaths (2.6 million or 89 per cent) were attributed to occupational diseases, while occupational accidents resulted in 330,000 deaths (11 per cent). The main diseases causing work-related deaths were circulatory diseases, malignant neoplasms, and respiratory diseases (these three contributed to almost three-quarters of total work-related mortality). Additionally, over 395 million workers worldwide sustained a non-fatal occupational injury.
Shockingly, the number of work-related deaths increased by more than 12 per cent from 2000 to 2019 (keeping in mind that the 2019 figures do not account for the stark impact of the pandemic which includes workplace Covid-19 infections and deaths). The rise is discouraging, but it should be interpreted in the context of a growing workforce (in the same period, the global employed population rose by over 28 per cent). Also, improvements in monitoring and reporting of occupational accidents over the last two decades contributed to an increase in the number of cases detected.
In this context, major (preventable) occupational accidents and disasters remain a considerable threat, affecting workers, their families, and communities at large. These calamities cause fatalities, injuries, diseases, and psychological harm. They also result in economic, social, and environmental damage, with a scarring long-term impact.
Occupational risk factors and associated health outcomes
The ILO and the WHO have jointly worked on identifying 41 pairs of occupational risk factors and the corresponding health outcomes, and on estimating their burden of disease and injury. According to these joint estimates, the 41 pairs of occupational risk factors and health outcomes analysed account for 89.7 million disability-adjusted life years (a measure of healthy time lost through premature death and years of healthy life lost due to disability).
Over 61 per cent of these disability-adjusted life years (close to 55 million) took place in Western Pacific and South-East Asia.
Discouragingly, the estimates point to an increase in global disability-adjusted life years of around 12 per cent from 2000 (when they stood at around 80 million) to 2016. However, once again, the discouraging rise in disability-adjusted life years associated with occupational risks has to be interpreted in the context of a growing employed population. Indeed, while in 2016, 1,635.9 disability-adjusted life years were attributable to occupational risk factors per 100,000 people aged 15 and above globally, the ratio is estimated at 1,878.4 for 2000. In fact, the ratio of disability-adjusted life years per 100,000 working-age people has declined in all regions between 2000 and 2016. The ratio is the highest in South-East Asia (2,099.2 in 2016) and Africa (1,867.1).
The WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury show that the occupational risk with the largest number of attributable deaths in 2016 was exposure to long working hours (55 hours per week or more). Long working hours were responsible for close to 745,000 deaths in 2016 (almost 40 per cent of the total estimated work-related deaths), while exposure to occupational particulate matter, gases and fumes killed over 450,000 people (almost 24 per cent of all estimated work-related deaths).
Leaving no one behind and the need for disaggregated data
Our commitment to leave no one behind in the quest for sustainable development requires reliable, timely, and especially disaggregated data, to monitor the situation of traditionally marginalized or vulnerable groups. This naturally applies also to our efforts to ensure the occupational safety and health of all workers, everywhere. In fact, the SDG target 8.8 specifically emphasizes the need to promote safe and secure working environments “for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment.”
Unfortunately, given the inherent complexities in the compilation of reliable occupational safety and health statistics, data breakdowns available are often scarce and have a limited country coverage. Still, the sparse disaggregated statistics that we have available are worth analysing.
In (only) 8 out of 19 countries with data available in ILOSTAT, the number of non-fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 workers was higher among migrants than non-migrants, and this was so in (only) 4 out of 21 countries with data for the number of fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 workers. However, these figures may be masking a more sombre reality for migrant workers, since migrant workers (especially in disadvantageous work situations) are believed to often avoid reporting occupational accidents and diseases or seeking medical care for fear (of being dismissed, of high costs they cannot afford, of intervention by the authorities, etc.).
Looking at the distribution of occupational injuries by sector of activity, it becomes clear that some sectors are more dangerous than others for workers, at least in terms of the risk of being in a work accident. In general terms, the sectors that seem to concentrate more non-fatal work accidents (in order of magnitude) are manufacturing, construction, wholesale and retail trade, and health and social work, agriculture, and transport and storage.
In 56 out of 59 countries with data, the rate of non-fatal work injuries is higher for men than for women, and this is true for the rate of fatal work injuries in 51 out of 52 countries with data.
The gender and sector dimensions are interconnected: the concentration or over-representation of male workers in the most unsafe sectors leads to the higher injuries rates for men. An additional possible explanation for this gender and sectoral dimension of work accidents is the traditional and inherent gender and sectoral bias in reporting, monitoring and data collection procedures for occupational safety and health matters as well as in occupational safety and health research. As Caroline Criado Pérez elaborates in Invisible Women – Exposing data bias in a world designed for men, since occupational research has historically focused on male-dominated industries, risks, hazards, and accidents of these industries are better known and better addressed. For instance, efforts to ensure the safety of workers doing heavy lifting in construction are common, often leading to regulation, but very little is known (and done) about the risks and impact of heavy lifting in care work (whether paid or unpaid).
This all points to the need to step up efforts in the compilation of comprehensive, representative, reliable, timely and disaggregated statistics on occupational accidents, injuries, and diseases, with a view to having accurate insights into occupational safety and health deficits and promptly identifying emerging occupational risks.
