ABSTRACT
About 400 people are killed each year in the UK, in accidents that take place at work. (The exact figure fluctuates a little from year to year.) A further 16000 are seriously injured; and at least ten times this number sustain injuries that although they are of a less severe nature, are none the less serious enough to keep them off work for three days or more (and thus find their way into the official statistics). Added to this we have an unknown (but doubtless very great) number who sustain minor injuries requiring first aid treatment only, and an unknown (but again large) number who develop diseases or ill health, of one sort or another, as a result of their work. (Figures from HSE Annual Reports.)
If we take fatalities as an index, however-and there seems to be good reason to do so, since they are likely to have been recorded more carefully than mishaps with less severe consequences-then the available evidence seems to indicate that work is getting steadily safer. The UK annual fatality rate currently stands at around 1.3-1.7 deaths per 100000 employees. In 1981 it was 2.1 per 100000; in 1971 it was 3.6 per 100000; in 1961 it was 5.6 per 100000; and in the first decade of this century it was 17.5 per 100000 (Figure 8.1). The downward trend is thought to be due in part to better regulation of working practices, and in part to changes in the nature of work such that fewer people are engaged in its more hazardous varieties.
