Introduction
Occupational health and safety is an extensive multidisciplinary field. Touching on scientific expertise like medicine, physics, chemistry and ergonomics as well as technology, law and even economic issues.
Many other industry specific activities are also come into play. Ultimately making occupational health and safety and intriguing and fulfilling career for professionals from wide variety of backgrounds.
History
In 1950 the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) created a shared, common definition of occupational health and safety.
The definition reads:
“Occupational health should aim at:
- the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations
- the prevention prevention amongst workers of departures from health caused by their working conditions
- the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health
- the placing and maintenance of the worker in an occupational environment adapted to his physiological and psychological capabilities
- and, to summarize the adaptation of work to man and of each man to his job.”