ABSTRACT
In the classical occupational health approach, work is understood as an environmental problem since it puts people in contact with chemical, physical, biological, and psychological agents that make them have accidents or get sick. The great merit of radical occupational health analysis is that it has demonstrated that health risks for workers are indissolubly linked to the functioning of capitalist industry, and that, therefore, the implementation of solutions depends more on power and struggle than on technical modifications. A total resolution of the problem must conceptualize work so as to include it as a central analytical category in the understanding of health and disease as social and collective situations embedded in the structure of society. In underdeveloped countries like Mexico, an important part of the population does not participate directly in the capitalist productive process but rather in petty commodity production in agriculture.
