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No, but we will have to move to the farms and the waste industry.
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Those involved in occupational health and safety might consider achieving the same reduction in those long term accidents caused occupational ill health.
Chris
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The reason (IMHO) is that most people who are in work are not doing much more than shuffling paper and prodding a computer.
Less people work full time so despite the "statistics" there are not so many of us "at work" when you tot up the hours.
Hazardous Industries where people actually get off their bum and do some work are seeing a rise vs hours worked. Construction injuries are rising even though employed hours have fallen dramatically.
Still, its good copy for the spin doctors who dominate the HSE these days.
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Rank: Super forum user
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....and the TUC have cast doubt on the validity of the figures pointing out that the number of days lost from accidents rose from 4.3m to 5.2m in the same period, suggesting that overall it can be expected that there were more reportable (rather than reported) accidents.
TUC suggest reasons why underreporting may have increased.
First the Government has directed that most workplaces are blocked from proactive inspection - i.e. employers not likely to be caught out underreporting via routine inspection (even if the block was lifted, there are of course many fewer regulatory staff).
Second Fee For Intervention likely to influence not wanting to be investigated if you report the accident.
....and IOSH comments that the likes of Russia wanting to learn from our excellence. However, Russia is probably decades ahead of the UK when it comes to occupational health risks. Certainly when I was part of an audit team looking at an iron and steel works in Ukraine, I was impressed by its approach to OH (as against safety risks). Ditto my colleague looking at a fertiliser works there the previous week.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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peter gotch wrote:....and the TUC have cast doubt on the validity of the figures pointing out that the number of days lost from accidents rose from 4.3m to 5.2m in the same period, suggesting that overall it can be expected that there were more reportable (rather than reported) accidents.
TUC suggest reasons why underreporting may have increased.
First the Government has directed that most workplaces are blocked from proactive inspection - i.e. employers not likely to be caught out underreporting via routine inspection (even if the block was lifted, there are of course many fewer regulatory staff).
Second Fee For Intervention likely to influence not wanting to be investigated if you report the accident.
....and IOSH comments that the likes of Russia wanting to learn from our excellence. However, Russia is probably decades ahead of the UK when it comes to occupational health risks. Certainly when I was part of an audit team looking at an iron and steel works in Ukraine, I was impressed by its approach to OH (as against safety risks). Ditto my colleague looking at a fertiliser works there the previous week. Don`t think Russia is Ukraine :-)
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Rank: Super forum user
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And expect even lower numbers of reports this year. . FFI could have been written deliberately to persuade employers not to report, and even more businesses will be getting confused by HSE stance on RIDDOR with the new Regs and guidance and choosing not to report.
Steve
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Rank: Forum user
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walker wrote:The reason (IMHO) is that most people who are in work are not doing much more than shuffling paper and prodding a computer.
Less people work full time so despite the "statistics" there are not so many of us "at work" when you tot up the hours.
Hazardous Industries where people actually get off their bum and do some work are seeing a rise vs hours worked. Construction injuries are rising even though employed hours have fallen dramatically.
Still, its good copy for the spin doctors who dominate the HSE these days. Interestingly I had a look at the ONS data and it shows increasing numbers of full time workers over the year (but not where) and reductions in employment in agriculture. Construction and manufacturing are broadly level in the people they employe, but there were big increases in (you guessed it) the numbers employed in real estate and IT/communication. I think those variations would explain some, but not all of the reductions in deaths and serious injuries. I believe that there is some positive effect of H&S management also. For me the issues to look at for the future are around road safety, at-work road accident fatalities arent included in those recently published figures and if they were they would dwarf the current 171 work fatalities. Also we need to think about health more broadly, 'stress' and mental health are behind a lot of lost productivity and I suspect we have seen only the tip of the iceberg....
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Rank: Super forum user
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Just to add a few thoughts:
Much occupational ill health is chronic and, given that we spend more time away from than at work, multifactorial (i.e. a combination of occupational and non-occupational exposures). With someone falling from height. It takes only seconds for the consequences to become apparent. With asbestos the effect will not become apparent for a long time, usually years. With some forms of occupational ill health, such as skin, it can then be difficult to identify the exact cause. The European Dermatology Forum has stated that underreporting means that figures for occupational skin disease understate the true situation by a factor somewhere between 10 and 50!
One of the consequences of this is that those concerned with health and safety have tended to concentrate on the acute accidents, assigning less importance to the chronic occupational ill health.
There are other factors that IMO are relevant, such as the view that inhalation exposure to chemical hazards is a more significant factor in occupational systemic effects that skin exposure. Yet statistics show this not to be the case. In the USA a study showed that reported cases of occupational skin disease exceeded reported cases of respiratory disease by a factor of 2.4 to 1. And this was just actual skin disease. Many chemicals can penetrate the skin and contribute to systemic damage, often ones that are unlikely ever to be inhaled. We have individual studies showing the significance of skin uptake, but no overall statistics.
So perhaps we need to be a little more cautious in how we evaluate some of the statistics that we are given.
Chris
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Rank: Forum user 
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Don't think we'll ever be surplus to requirements. When I did 10 pin bowling I made an average of 180 (once!) - maintaining it was even harder than achieving it.
But as the others in the thread are saying, how believable are the statistics and can there ever be a realistic estimate of how much under-reporting goes on, whether intentional or through ignorance. Surely there has to be something wrong with a system that encourages employers to report something they will subsequently be prosecuted for.
And my own humble opinion says with cut backs in H&S law and anti H&S stealth tactics like FFI (which is only going to deter employer-regulator interactions) we'll soon see the stats coming back up!
P.S. I was I'll when I posted this - may explain the grumpy nature of the post...
P.P.S wasn't off with stress though!
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