HSE Accident Stats Drastically Underestimated

[brothermagrew]

Hazards Campaign says HSE Accident Statistics Drastically Underestimate Work-Related Deaths and Injuries:
The Hazards Campaign have issued their detailed comments on the HSE's recently published 2007/8 accident statistics. The HSE statistics claim to 'reveal a reduction in number of people killed, injured or made ill by work during 2007/08' and state that '229 people were killed by work.'
The Hazards Campaign challenges the figures claiming they drastically undercount the numbers killed in work-related incidents, do not include those killed by occupational illness, and grossly underestimate the numbers suffering from work-related ill-health.

Hilda Palmer of the Hazards Campaign stated that there is an annual misrepresentation of the numbers killed by work which contributes to the undermining of worker and public safety and the case for policies and resources to be allocated to tackling what is a massive cause of public ill-health, and masks the huge number of personal tragedies occurring every day. It also encourages a false sense of security by underestimating the real risk faced by workers and members of the public, and feeds into the nonsensical 'health and safety gone mad' theme commonly perpetrated in the media, and demands from business for deregulation and less health and safety regulation and enforcement which some employers say is a 'burden on business'. The statement added that the current global economic crisis is largely due deregulation and lack of regulation, allowing and trusting financial businesses to do the right thing, we can all now see how that has brought us to the brink of disaster. Governments need to learn the lessons from the financial sector and look far more critically at what's really going on in our workplaces where more workers are being killed, injured and made ill, than the HSE headline figures suggest and we need more health and safety law and enforcement rather than less.

The headline fatality figure quoted in HSE press release '229 people were killed at work' fails to make clear that this refers only the workers killed in workplace incidents whose deaths were reportable to the HSE or local authorities, not those reportable to other enforcement authorities such as the police, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency or the Civil Aviation Authority.

The HSE 229 fatalities do not include:

• The estimated 1,000 who are killed in road traffic incidents involving 'at work' vehicles
• The 95 members of the public killed by work activities
• An estimated 30 killed in coastal waters or in aircraft incidents
• The 100-250 suicides attributed to work-related stress.

The Hazards Campaign estimates the total number of people killed in work-related incidents last year as about 1,454 - 1,606 which is six to seven times the HSE headline figure, and more than the number of murders each year!
But the iceberg of work-related ill-health is as always, the number dying each year due to occupational illnesses which the Hazards Campaign estimate as up to 50,000.

The HSE statistics state that 'every year thousands of people die from work-related diseases' and itemise these as work-related cancer deaths in excess of 6,000, of which about 4,000 are due to asbestos cancers, plus 111 deaths from asbestosis, 182 from pneumoconiosis, and around 15% of COPD that may be work-related, which is about 4,000 deaths. Adding this up gives an HSE estimate of deaths due to work-related diseases each year of 10,293.
The Hazards Campaign estimates that each year:

• 12% of all cancer deaths are work-related which suggests 18,000 deaths, compared to the HSE's 6,000
• 15-20% of obstructive lung disease deaths are work related, which is about 6,000 deaths
• 20% of heart disease deaths are work-related, which is about 20,000 deaths
• 6,000 deaths from all other work-related causes including restrictive respiratory diseases.

Which gives a possible estimate of up to 50,000 dying from occupational disease each year.
For more information contact Hilda Palmer 0161 636 7557. The Hazards Campaign, c/o Greater Manchester Hazards Centre, Windrush Millennium Centre, 70 Alexandra Road,
Manchester, M16 7WD or http://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Dave Joyce
CWU National Health, Safety & Environment Officer

[DGP1]

If the companies/government spent as much money on reducing accidents as they did on finding ways to fiddle the figures then we'd all be better off.