ABSTRACT
While, in principle, all occupational injury and disease is preventable, in practice this means assessing the risks of injury and ill-health and taking balanced steps to reduce
those risks so far as is reasonable and feasible. It is a responsibility of the occupational physician to urge management as far as possible in this direction. While many managers are sympathetic, and only a minority are careless of the welfare of their workers, their primary role is to make a profit or, at the least, to achieve a set financial target. It is a part of managerial decision-making to balance the cost of a particular decision against the likely benefits to the company. When it comes to deciding on measures to prevent ill-health, the equation becomes one of balancing the perceived costs of prevention against the cost of the perceived risk of occurrence. Prevention will usually only be implemented if it has a price tag that is reasonable when compared to the perceived benefits.
