Spotlight On – Occupational Disease

Occupational Disease

The term ‘occupational disease’ covers a wide range of diseases that are linked with occupational exposure to specific hazards. In this spotlight article, we’re looking at some of the focus areas in occupational disease.

What is occupational disease?

The World Health Organisation define ‘occupational disease’ as:

“any disease contracted primarily as a result of an exposure to risk factors arising from work activity.”

In 2013/14, an estimated 1.2 million workers were suffering from an illness or disease they believed was caused or made worse by work. 535,000 of these were new cases that started during the year.

There are estimated to be 12,000 deaths each year caused by past exposure to harmful substances at work.

What are the focus areas?

The areas of focus for occupational disease are wide ranging, but important areas include:

• Occupational dermatitis
• Stress (Read our article here)
• Musculoskeletal disorders
• Cancer
• Asbestos-related disease (Read our article here)
• Respiratory disease
• Deafness (Read our article here)
• Skin disease
• Vibration-related disease.

What are the challenges?

Some instances of occupational disease are harder to tackle than safety issues – mainly because cause and effect are often not clearly linked.

Some occupational diseases can be hard to monitor as the effects are not seen until many years later, for example with diseases linked to asbestos exposure. This may make cause and effect harder to establish. It also means that once the problem is recognised, changes can be made to reduce exposure but unfortunately there may be a long delay before a reduction in ill health is seen.

 Each disease presents its own challenges, and limitations vary from industry to industry, but once a link is established and exposure is measured, then awareness can be raised, and safe practices can be introduced. In this way, we can bring around behavioural and industry change to reduce exposures and prevent ill health and disease.

In Conculsion

Occupational disease covers a huge area of ill health, often resulting life-altering or even life-ending disease.

What is important is that by taking steps to reduce the occurrence of occupational disease, and introducing safe working procedures to reduce exposure, we can make a huge difference to millions of workers’ lives.

For further information, take a look at the HSE’s occupational health online community here.

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