There are a mind boggling eighty thousand plus chemicals used in manufacturing processes for both consumers and industry with approximately four thousand additional chemicals added to that total each and every year. With the potential for that number of substances of varying levels of toxicity to be found in workplaces across the land it is surprising that there aren’t more chemical injuries to workers than the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE’s) latest statistics reveal. For that we should be grateful to comprehensive health and safety legislation and the vast majority of employers taking their duty of care to their employers justifiably seriously.
The bottom line is that, according to the HSE, just over two per cent of all industrial injuries are due to ‘harmful substances’. Those injuries break down into 2% of all fatal industrial injuries and approximately 2.5% of non-fatal injuries. There are also many cases of industrial disease including industrial dermatitis and the milder skin disorder, contact urticaria caused by exposure to workplace chemicals such as commonplace adhesives and cleaning products, which the HSE statistics show as affecting 44 in every 100,000 workers annually in the UK. This, they acknowledge, is probably only the tip of an under reported iceberg.
It is medically well known that some chemicals are carcinogenic and the HSE estimates that out of the eight thousand work caused cancers that are currently identified annually, approximately one thousand are caused by chemicals. These chemicals are predominantly diesel exhaust and paint and cause most commonly, non-lymphatic leukaemia and bladder, skin, liver and sino-nasal cancer.
As more and more new chemicals are developed and introduced into industrial processes and products, the pressure on employers to identify hazards, judge risk and take the necessary steps to protect their employees from injury increases at an unrelenting rate. Statistics are a clinical indicator of how well they are carrying out this duty in an ever changing environment but they barely hint at the suffering of chemical injury victims or the oversights and negligence by employers that might have been the cause of a workplace accident or industrial disease.
Whilst health and safety legislation has made accidents at work and industrial disease from harmful chemicals, much less likely, many thousands of people continue to suffer from these work related injuries or illness. Industrial disease, in particular, may have been developing slowly over a long period, perhaps before such rigid safety regulations were in place.
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