Occupational health or occupational safety: which impact is larger?

Employees can be exposed to different risks at the workplace, for example chronic exposure to harmful substances, physical stress and accidents. In 2010, the Occupational Health Impact Assessment (OHIA) model was developed to compare occupational health and occupational safety. The comparison is done by calculating their contributions to the burden of disease of employees. Model expanded with burden of disease due to hand eczema: In 2011, the OHIA model is expanded by the calculation of the burden of disease due to hand eczema. Furthermore, a few discussion points were resolved and the user requirements were specified for converting the model into a valuable software-tool. It is recommended to investigate the demand for the OHIA software-tool in industry sectors. Risks calculated with uncertainties: The model takes uncertainty into account to make comparisons more meaningful. To highlight the importance of uncertainty, the risks are calculated for four job titles with and without uncertainty. The job titles selected were tiler, road paver, carpenter and concrete driller, based on their high contribution to the total burden of disease in the construction sector. The occupational risks considered were the risks of accidents, lifting of heavy objects and exposure to silica. For tilers and road pavers, the exposure to silica has the highest contribution to the burden of disease if best estimates are used without uncertainty. However, taking uncertainty into account, the contributions of lifting heavy loads and accidents becomes comparable to the contribution of exposure to silica. For carpenters and concrete drillers, the uncertainties do not change the results significantly. The OHIA model is developed by RIVM in collaboration with experts from the University of Utrecht (IRAS), TNO, Erasmus Medical Center of Rotterdam and two consultants.