European risk assessment project launched

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work has launched a risk assessment tool to help Europe's 20 million micro and small enterprises to improve health & safety for their workers by assessing risks through an easy-to-use and cost-free web application.

“Experience shows that proper risk assessment is the key to healthy workplaces,” explains Dr Jukka Takala, director of EU-OSHA. “Yet carrying out risk assessments can be quite challenging, particularly for small enterprises as they lack adequate resources or the know-how to do so effectively. The reasons companies give for not carrying out checks are lack of expertise (41%), the belief that risk assessments are too expensive or that they are overly time consuming (38%). In OiRA, EU-OSHA is proud to offer a free online tool to overcome these challenges. OiRA aims to contribute to eliminating or reducing the 168 000 workrelated deaths, 7 million accidents and 20 million cases of work-related disease annually in the EU 27,” says Dr Takala.

The vision of EU-OSHA's project is to assist small enterprises in putting in place a step-by-step risk assessment process - starting with the identification and evaluation of workplace risks, through to the decision making on preventive action, identification of adequate measures, to continued monitoring and reporting.

For more information, see: www.oiraproject.eu