Introduction to Occupational Hygiene

Module 1: Occupational Hygiene - Section 1: Introduction to Occupational Hygiene

OH1.1: Introduction to Occupational Hygiene

GENERAL OBJECTIVES

To help students appreciate the role of occupational hygiene in preventing and controlling harmful exposures that may lead to occupational diseases and injuries.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

distinguish between health and safety hazards;
identify potential and existing health hazards in a workplace setting;
select appropriate monitoring techniques for evaluating working conditions; and
assist in the design of a cost effective hazard control strategy aimed at making the workplace healthier.

INTRODUCTION:

South Africa currently has approximately 16.1 million economically active workers ¹. Their distribution is shown in the table below: The number of workers employed in the formal sector is steadily declining. A significant number of workers are gaining employment in the informal sector.

DISTRIBUTION OF WORKERS IN SOUTH AFRICA ¹
Employed			Unemployed
Formal	Informal	Domestic	4.7 millions
7.8 millions	2.6 millions	0.98 millions	4.7 millions
Total: 11.4 millions			Total: 4.7 millions
Total: 16.1 millions

Workers as a group are exposed to a wide variety of health and safety hazards in the workplace. Occupational health professionals believe that a considerable number of workers are victims of occupational diseases due to unhealthy and disease promoting work environments. According to the Department of Labour, the number of occupational diseases reported to the Compensation Commissioner increased from 3146 cases in 2000 to 3456 cases in 2001, a 10 percent increase on the previous year ². In contrast, the number of incidents (fatal and non-fatal) showed a drop. Although these figures are useful for showing trends, they are not very useful for describing the situation on the shop floor due to underreporting by employers.

Occupational injuries and diseases are estimated to cost the country more than 16.1 million rands per year in lost production, absenteeism, compensation costs (awards, medical expenses and administration) and rehabilitation of injured workers ³. This amount, however, does not include the cost of lost employment opportunities, pain suffered by workers, and distress to families who rely on the income from sick or injured workers. It also excludes other externalised costs from the private for-profit sector to the state for health and social services.

In the past, government and industry have focussed disproportionately on preventing incidents and injuries which result in injury or damage to property ⁴. In other words, occupational safety received priority at the expense of occupational health. Some of the reasons that have been put forward to explain this are:

Accidents generate more publicity;
High rate of unemployment;
Migrant labour system;
Absence of legislation regulating health hazards in the workplace;
Lack of suitably trained and qualified occupational health personnel;
Long latency period;
Lack of occupational diseases statistics.

REFERENCES

Statistics SA. Labour Force Survey: September 2001. Published by Government Printers, Pretoria, 26 March 2002.
Department of Labour.Preliminary Annual Report 2001/2002 . Published by Directorate of Communications, Pretoria.
Benjamin P and Greef J. Report of the Committee of Inquiry into a National Health and Safety Council in South Africa. Unpublished report dated 9 May 1997.
Report of the Erasmus Commission of Enquiry on Occupational Health. Pretoria: Government Printer, 1976.

General Introduction to Occupational Health: Occupational Hygiene, Epidemiology & Biostatistics by Prof Jonny Myers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License