Frequency of Work-Related Diseases - an Indicator of Working Environment Standard
Authors: Wiig Helge 
Published: December 2007

Much attention has traditionally been given to acute events like personal injuries and accidents, while long term effects like work related diseases inducing much higher costs for the companies, employees and the society has received much less attention. During the last years the NPD has focused on this topic to get the companies to chart such cases, report them to the authorities and to establish the frequency of such cases as a health performance indicator, Data regarding work-related diseases may be a useful tool in health, safety and working environment management.

Introduction

In safety and working environment management in companies, much attention has traditionally been given to acute events like personal injuries and accidents. Such events are followed up in a systematic manner, and are often used as indicators of the company's health and safety performance. Less attention has traditionally been given to more long term effects of working environment factors like work-related diseases. The reason for this discrepancy may be that acute events are dealt with by the line management, while diseases are an area for the doctor and therefore more confidential.

Occurrence of work related diseases induces much greater costs to the company than occupational accidents. A scientific institute in Norway (SINTEF) has estimated the total costs of conditions caused partially or wholly by an unhealthy working environment. It was found that a cost of 40 billion NOK (close to 7 billion USD) could be ascribed to the working environment in various ways, i.e, close to 10% of the gross national budget in Norway. Of this sum only 5% originated from personal injuries and accidents, the rest to a kind of work-related "ill-health". Even with reservations with respect to the absolute number of the cost, it is evident that such work-related diseases are expensive for the companies, the employee as well as for the society.

Most of the conditions mentioned above are preventable, and therefore it is important to work towards a reduction of cases. There is a lot of money to save with an active attitude in preventive respect. As authority on the Norwegian continental shelf, the NPD could contribute in this respect by an increased attention on work-related diseases by more actively enforcing the legal requirement of reporting. Our aim was to get the reporting system to work as well as corresponding systems for occupational accidents, and to establish the frequency of work-related diseases as an indicator of working environment standard or a health and safety performance indicator in the petroleum industry.

Methods and procedures

In this paper work-related disease is defined as occupational disease or other disease which wholly or partly is caused by the employee's work situation. The Norwegian Working Environment Act of 1977 specifies that any doctor that acquires knowledge of such a condition during his work should report cases to the NPD. However, until 1992 few such reports were received, and an effort was made to increase the reporting frequency. A charting in some operating and contracting companies showed that this topic was little in focus, and that very few collected data systematically from this area.

P. 303