BOHS - BRITISH OCCUPATIONAL HYGIENE SOCIETY
BOHS COMMENTS ON LATEST
HEALTH AND STATISTICS
While the latest health and safety statistics are encouraging,
the cost of work-related ill health is still too high.
B
OHS, the Chartered Society for Worker Health
Protection, has welcomed the latest health and safety
at work statistics 1 , recently published by the Health
& Safety Executive (HSE).
The new statistics provide an extremely useful and
comprehensive illustration of work-related health and
safety in the UK. Simon Festing, CEO of BOHS stated:
“While some of the trends are encouraging, many of the
figures remain concerningly high, clearly indicating that in
terms of ensuring best practice in worker health protection,
many challenges remain. It’s vital that both employers
and employees embrace effective occupational hygiene
practice, in order to reduce the burden and human cost of
work-related ill health.”
HEADLINE STATISTICS AND TRENDS
Key statistics from the HSE’s report include:
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1.3 million working people are suffering from a work-
related illness (new or long-standing).
25.7 million working days were lost due to work-related
ill health (2016/17).
13,000 deaths each year are estimated to be linked
to past exposures at work, primarily chemicals or dust:
occupational lung diseases account for around 12,000 of
these deaths.
2,542 mesothelioma deaths are due to past exposure
to asbestos 2 . The projection is that there will be
around 2,500 mesothelioma deaths per year to the end
of the decade, before a decline in numbers is seen.
£14.9 billion is the estimated cost of injuries and ill
health, due to current working conditions 3 (this figure
excludes long latency illness such as cancer).
HSE INTERNATIONAL
Although the above figures may seem alarmingly high, a
few of the overall trends depict a slightly more encouraging
picture:
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Since 2001, the overall rate of work-related ill health
demonstrated a slight downward trend, with a broadly
flat scale since 2014.
The number of working days lost per worker, due to
work related ill health, demonstrated a downward
trend until approximately 2010/11, with a broadly flat
rate thereafter.
The UK has lower rates of work-related ill heath than
most other EU countries.
However, despite some of the key figures remaining flat
– as opposed to showing an actual increase - there
is clearly still cause for concern that the overall human
costs of work-related ill health remain too high, further
underlining an evident need for the work BOHS
undertakes to raise awareness of the benefits of
occupational hygiene.
WORKING TOGETHER TO RAISE AWARENESS
Critical to the success of reducing workplace ill health, is
that everyone embraces their responsibilities - employers
have a duty to ensure that everyone can ‘Go Home Healthy’
from work, and employees need to play their part too: this
is one of the HSE’s key campaigns currently, encouraging
everyone to ‘do the right thing’ and protect workers’ health.
Additionally, highlighting and tackling the costs of work-
related ill health is one of the six themes of the HSE’s five-
year strategy ‘Helping Great Britain work well’, launched in
2016.