ABSTRACT
Every year hundreds of thousands of people die as a result of work-related experiences and exposures. Despite regulatory efforts and advances in medicine and safety engineering, the global burden of work-related death, injury, and disease remains huge; it is far in excess of that arising, for example, from armed conflicts. The ILO has estimated that around 2.3 million workers die every year as a result of work-related ill-health and injury. Of these, 350,000 deaths are attributed to accidents at work, while the rest are caused by occupational ill-health. It further estimates that there are an additional 264 million nonfatal accidents each year and 160 million people with work-related illnesses. The economic cost of this loss is thought to be equivalent to 4% of global GDP or $1.25 trillion (Hämäläinen, Takala, and Saarela, 2005).
