Health and Safety

Health and safety in the workplace, also known as occupational health and safety and occupational hygiene, is a multidisciplinary field that involves medicine, law, management and organizational studies. It relates to the employer’s duty to provide a safe workplace as a necessary condition to preserve workers’ health and well-being. To fulfill such legal and social responsibilities, employers have to identify health and safety hazards, i.e., anything that has the potential to harm workers or provoke illnesses. Hazards may consist in work materials, equipment, work methods and practices, workplace layout, microclimate. Moreover, hazards may derive from workloads and other organizational aspects. The combination of the likelihood that somebody may suffer an occupational injury or disease and the estimated consequences for that person and for others (such as colleagues and visitors), determines the so-called occupational risk, which employers are supposed to minimize through the implementation of occupational health and safety risk management. The provision of healthy and safe working conditions is also required by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which specifically aims to ensure a decent work to all people (SDG 8) and to support good health and well-being (SDG 3).