Occupational Health/Occupational Injury

Avoiding occupational injury is in the shared interest of workers, employers, and governments. There is an inherent compromise that is struck between safety and productivity when doing dangerous, but necessary, work. Ultimately, the loss of productivity associated with an injured of killed worker and the loss of a productive member of society makes worker safety a common goal, to say nothing of the emotional pain of losing someone close.

Occupational illnesses

Certain types of occupational illnesses, which can also be construed as Occupational injury, include chronic conditions like silicosis and asbestosis, caused by the breathing of hard mineral dust during the grinding of rock. They also include pathogens, like tuberculosis, which are especially prevalent in the occupation of medicine. For more details, go to the Occupational Illnesses page.

This page will focus more on more acute injuries, as well as injuries immediately dangerous to life and health (IDLH).

Physical injuries

Blunt trauma

Chemical

Asphyxiation

Remedies

Administrative controls

The provision for a safe working environment requires the linking of responsibility for an injury to the worker and the employer alike. It is reasonable to expect that a worker will engage in a given activity in a sensible fashion and with all faculties in place, and with a compliant attitude toward linked safety measures that have been inculcated by the policies of the employer. Piece work driven industrial processes are most likely to amplify the risks to workers as they work harder and faster and with any shortcut they may perceive in order to maximize their gain for time expended.

The linkage of responsibility for injury to a worker to his employer is justified by the fact that the participation in the work setting is a proximate cause of the injury sustained and that factors in the work environment unrelated to the workers behavior result in the injury. Litigation becomes the default result of dispute over responsibility and threatens by virtue of the shear volume of litigation that could potentially result. As a consequence we evolve systems of regulation for worker safety that are intended to enforce an acceptable level of safety thereby minimizing the risks to an acceptable level and in any case precluding the possibility of economic gain through a disregard for worker safety through an enforced sanctioning of the enterprise by the responsible government agency.

Workers compensation

Society can balance the need to do necessary work, with the moral obligation to compensating the loss of income for those injured by enacting workers compensation laws.

Some people view workers compensation as a cost. However, one can also view workers compensation as a way to incentivize people to do dangerous work. When evaluating costs, hidden costs, like the cost of driving workers away, as well as the cost of hiring new workers to replace injured ones, to say nothing of potential future liabilities like lawsuits, must all be considered when evaluating the cost of workers' compensation.

By and large, for responsible businesses, the costs of workers compensation are well worth the risks mitigated.