The Global Burden of Occupational Disease

Abstract

Purpose of review: Burden of occupational disease estimation contributes to understanding of both magnitude and relative importance of different occupational hazards and provides essential information for targeting risk reduction. This review summarises recent key findings and discusses their impact on occupational regulation and practice.

Recent findings: New methods have been developed to estimate burden of occupational disease that take account of the latency of many chronic diseases and allow for exposure trends and workforce turnover. Results from these studies have shown in several countries and globally that, in spite of improvements in workplace technology, practices and exposures over the last decades, occupational hazards remain an important cause of ill health and mortality worldwide. Major data gaps have been identified particularly regarding exposure information. Reliable data on employment and disease are also lacking especially in developing countries. Burden of occupational disease estimates form an important part of decision-making processes.

Keywords: Burden estimation; Cancer; Exposure assessment; Impact; Occupation; Respiratory disease.

Fig. 1

Numbers of occupationally related cancer registrations (2011) by carcinogen and major industry sector

Fig. 2

a Numbers of global occupationally related deaths in 2015 by WHO region and major disease group (This figure was derived from data available on the following site: GBD Compare. IHME, University of Washington; 2016. https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/. Accessed January 2017.). b Numbers of global occupationally related DALYS in 2015 by WHO region and major disease group. (This figure was derived from data available on the following site: GBD Compare. IHME, University of Washington; 2016. https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/. Accessed January 2017)