Occupational safety and health can be important for moral, legal, and financial reasons. All organisations have a duty of care to ensure that employees and any other person who may be affected by the companies undertaking remain safe at all times.[2] Moral obligations would involve the protection of employee's lives and health. Legal reasons for OSH practices relate to the preventative, punitive and compensatory effects of laws that protect worker's safety and health. OSH can also reduce employee injury and illness related costs, including medical care, sick leave and disability benefit costs. OSH may involve interactions among many subject areas, including occupational medicine, occupational hygiene, public health, safety engineering, industrial engineering, chemistry, health physics, industrial and organizational psychology, ergonomics and occupational health psychology.
Contents
1 Definition
2 History
3 Workplace hazards
3.1 Physical and mechanical hazards
3.2 Biological and chemical hazards
3.2.1 Biological hazards
3.2.2 Chemical hazards
3.3 Psychosocial hazards
4 Occupational safety and health by industry
4.1 Construction
4.2 Agriculture
4.3 Service sector
4.4 Mining and oil & gas extraction
5 Workplace fatalities statistics
5.1 European Union
5.2 United States
6 Management systems
6.1 International
6.2 United Kingdom
7 National legislation and public organizations
7.1 European Union
7.2 United Kingdom
7.3 Denmark
7.4 United States
7.5 Canada
7.6 Malaysia
7.7 People's Republic of China
7.8 South Africa
8 Roles and responsibilities of OSH