Occupational Health Hazards: Employer, Employee, and Labour Union Concerns

Oscar Rikhotso, Thabiso John Morodi and Daniel Masilu Masekameni
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Oscar Rikhotso: Department of Environmental Health, Tshwane University of Technology, Private Bag X680, Pretoria 0001, South Africa
Thabiso John Morodi: Department of Environmental Health, Tshwane University of Technology, Private Bag X680, Pretoria 0001, South Africa
Daniel Masilu Masekameni: Occupational Health Division, School of Public Health, University of Witwatersrand, Parktown 2193, South Africa

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 10, 1-61

Abstract: This review paper examines the extent of employer, worker, and labour union concerns to occupational health hazard exposure, as a function of previously reported and investigated complaints. Consequently, an online literature search was conducted, encompassing publicly available reports resulting from investigations, regulatory inspection, and enforcement activities conducted by relevant government structures from South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Of the three countries’ government structures, the United States’ exposure investigative activities conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health returned literature search results aligned to the study design, in the form of health hazard evaluation reports reposited on its online database. The main initiators of investigated exposure cases were employers, workers, and unions at 86% of the analysed health hazard evaluation reports conducted between 2000 and 2020. In the synthesised literature, concerns to exposure from chemical and physical hazards were substantiated by occupational hygiene measurement outcomes confirming excessive exposures above regulated health and safety standards in general. Recommendations to abate the confirmed excessive exposures were made in all cases, highlighting the scientific value of occupational hygiene measurements as a basis for exposure control, informing risk and hazard perception. Conclusively, all stakeholders at the workplace should have adequate risk perception to trigger abatement measures.

Keywords: chemical and physical hazards; health hazard evaluation; health and safety standards; risk perception (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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