Health & Safety at work – 2018 stats revealed
The Health and Safety Executive have released new statistics summarizing health and safety incidents at work in Britain for the year 2017-2018.
Published last week, the report breaks down the findings into five main areas of work-related health issues:
- General ill-health
- Stress, depression and anxiety
- Musculoskeletal disorders
- Lung disease
- Injury
Occupational Lung Disease
These stats reveal that around 12,000 deaths in the past year can be attributed to lung diseases. Primarily caused by previous hazardous exposure at work.
83x the amount of deaths caused by injury (144) in the past year.
And 92% of last year’s 13,000 deaths linked to past hazardous exposures at work.
Cost to Britain
Occupational ill-health has a real impact on the economy.
Over 52.7 million days were lost in the past year due to worker ill-health, costing some £15 billion (excluding long latency illnesses such as cancer).
While £3 billion of this cost is being covered by Employers and a further £3.4 billion is covered by the Government – it is individual workers in the majority of cases that are suffering the cost – £8.6 billion of it to be exact.
Ill-health by Sector
The HSE also breakdown the statistics by industry – revealing that Health and Social work account for the second highest amount of work-related ill health. This is hardly surprising when considering the physical and emotional demands of these roles and the amount of bacteria and viruses healthcare professionals come into contact with every single day.
For more information about HSE and this year’s statistics, please visit their website: www.HSE.gov.uk