Latest accident statistics show a mixed picture

Latest figures from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) show that Britain has achieved one of the lowest rates of accidental fatal injuries to workers in leading European industrial nations consistently for the past eight years. 

This provisional annual data on workplace injuries is something to be welcomed, but we must also not lose sight of the bigger picture. 

Some of the reduction is undoubtedly due to better health and safety management, but some is also due to reduced economic activity due to the recession. And in some sectors, such as waste, fatal accident trends remain worryingly high.

Overall, 148 workers died at work between April 2012 and March 2013, compared with 172 in the previous year, and the overall rate also dropped to 0.5 per 100,000 workers, below the five-year average of 0.6.

The construction and agriculture sectors also followed suit with a fall in deaths, but unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the waste and recycling industry. There were 10 deaths in this sector – double that of the five fatalities in the previous year. This latest figure also compares poorly to the average of six deaths over the past five years. Meanwhile, the rate of deaths in waste is 8.2 fatalities per 100,000 workers, against a five year average of 4.7, slightly less than the rate of 8.8 deaths per 100,000 for agricultural workers, but far, far higher than the rate of 1.9 deaths for construction workers.

We could really do with a balanced score card, similar to that used by individual businesses and at national level, to help get a better sense of the UK’s overall health and safety performance.

Although they are used as a rough performance guide, notifiable fatal injuries to workers under RIDDOR are only the tip of a much bigger iceberg of injury. We must not forget that almost as many members of the public are now killed in work-related accidents as employees and the self-employed.

And of course, RIDDOR excludes three to four times as many fatalities to workers that are due to work-related road traffic accidents.

Above all, it needs to be remembered that the much bigger cause of early work-related death is as a result of health damage due to past exposure to hazardous working conditions, such as work-related cancers (including mesothelioma from exposure to asbestos) and respiratory disease. There are worrying signs that these trends are not reducing fast enough.

Then there are many kinds of non-fatal occupational diseases that need to be considered, including dermatitis, occupational deafness, vibration injury and, of course, the much more prevalent problems of musculo-skeletal disorders and work-related stress. All this is a major cause of largely hidden suffering for victims and their families, and a massive drain  on productivity and NHS resources.

Progress in saving workers’ lives due to accidents in hazardous industries is to be welcomed, but more work is still needed to reduce non-fatal injuries and to safeguard workers’ health.

Further data is due to be released by the HSE in October on the numbers of serious injuries and estimates of the numbers of premature deaths caused by harmful exposures in the workplace, and we will be looking at that with great interest.