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Occupational Safety and Workplace Hazards

Opinion Article - Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health (2022)

Occupational Safety and Workplace Hazards

Obdeen Omer*
 
Department of Healthcare Management, Sanda University, Shanghai, China
 
*Corresponding Author:

Obdeen Omer, Department of Healthcare Management, Sanda University, Shanghai, China, Email: ommereen48@yahoo.com

Received: 21-Nov-2022, Manuscript No. JENVOH-22-87256; Editor assigned: 23-Nov-2022, Pre QC No. JENVOH-22-87256(PQ); Reviewed: 07-Dec-2022, QC No. JENVOH-22-87256; Revised: 15-Dec-2022, Manuscript No. JENVOH-22-87256(R); Published: 22-Dec-2022

Description

Occupational safety and health (OSH) also referred to as occupational health and safety, occupational health, or occupational safety, is a multidisciplinary field that deals with the safety, health, and welfare of people while they are at work. An occupational safety and health program’s goal is to promote a safe and healthy work environment. OSH also safeguards all members of the public who might be impacted by the workplace environment. An accident or illness related to the workplace claims the lives of more than 2.78 million people worldwide each year, or one every fifteen seconds. Every year, there are an extra 374 million non-fatal workplace accidents. According to estimates, the annual economic cost of occupational illness, injury, and death is close to 4% of the world GDP. This adversity has a high human cost. Employers have a common law obligation to ensure their employees’ safety in common-law jurisdictions. Additionally, statutes may impose other general obligations, add particular obligations, and establish government agencies with the authority to oversee occupational safety issues. The specifics of this differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Occupational health deals with all elements of health and safety in the workplace and has a strong focus on primary prevention of hazards, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not only the absence of disease or disability is the definition of health. The goal of the multidisciplinary medical area known as occupational health is to help people work in ways that are least harmful to their health. It is in line with the advocacy for workplace health and safety, which is focused on preventing injury from dangers. Occupational health should aim to: promote and maintain the highest level of physical, mental, and social well-being for workers in all occupations; prevent health departures among workers caused by their working conditions; protect workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health; place and maintain the worker in an occupational environment adapted to his physiological and psychological needs. Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) experts should establish their foundations in evidence-based practice given the significant demand in society for health and safety provisions at work that are based on accurate information. Evidence-informed decision making is a new phrase. Evidence-based practice is defined as the utilization of evidence from the literature and other evidence-based sources for recommendations and decisions that are in the best interests of the health, safety, well-being, and productivity of workers. Since professional knowledge and the values of the workforce must be incorporated, evidence-based information must do the same. Legal, cultural, financial, and technical context considerations must be taken into account. Ethics must be taken into account. Despite the numerous financial and non-financial advantages of labor, a variety of workplace risks endanger employees’ health and safety. These include but are not limited to, “chemicals, biological agents, physical factors, adverse ergonomic conditions, allergens, a complex network of safety risks,” and a broad range of psychosocial risk factors. Physical hazards affect many people in the workplace. Infectious bacteria, viruses, and poisons produced by those organisms, such as anthrax, are examples of biological hazards. Workers in a variety of industries are impacted by biohazards; influenza, for instance, has a widespread impact on workers.

Copyright: � 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.