ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of procedures for workplace health investigations using the occupational hygiene principles of anticipation, recognition, evaluation and control of workplace hazards. The preventative approach of occupational hygiene, namely interventions made to the work and work environment, rather than the worker, are responsible for a large proportion of improvements in worker health. A key characteristic of many workplace health hazards is their slow and insidious effect on health, resulting in a toll of worker illness and death that greatly exceeds the number of traumatic workplace injuries and fatalities. Reliable data on the contributions of workplace conditions to ill-health in the community have traditionally been difficult to assemble, and this is a worldwide problem. Data on compensation for work-related ill-health is lacking, leading to a misleading impression of the true prevalence of occupational disease. The limitations of current workers’ compensation data systems for recording and estimating occupational illness are recognised.
