Occupational safety and health

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Occupational safety and health (OSH) is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment and entrants. As a secondary effect, OSH may also protect co-workers, family members, employers, customers, suppliers, nearby communities, and other members of the public who are impacted by the workplace environment.
Since 1950, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have shared a common definition of occupational health. It was adopted by the Joint ILO/WHO Committee on Occupational Health at its first session in 1950 and revised at its twelfth session in 1995. The definition reads: "Occupational health should aim at: the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations; the prevention amongst workers of departures from health caused by their working conditions; the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health; the placing and maintenance of the worker in an occupational environment adapted to his physiological and psychological capabilities; and, to summarize, the adaptation of work to man and of each man to his job."
The reasons for establishing good occupational safety and health standards are frequently identified as:
• Moral - An employee should not have to risk injury at work, nor should
others associated with the work environment.
• Economic - many governments realize that poor occupational safety and health
performance results in cost to the State (e.g. through social security
payments to the incapacitated, costs for medical treatment, and the loss
of the "employability" of the worker). Employing organisations also sustain
costs in the event of an incident at work (such as legal fees, fines,
compensatory damages, investigation time, lost production, lost goodwill
from the workforce, from customers and from the wider community).
• Legal - Occupational safety and health requirements may be reinforced in
civil law and/or criminal law; it is accepted that without the
extra "encouragement" of potential regulatory action or litigation, many
organisations would not act upon their implied moral obligations.