Nearly two million people die each year from work-related causes, including diseases related to long hours of work and air pollution, an estimate by United Nations agencies said on Friday.
The study, the first of its kind assessment by the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization, found that work-related illnesses and injuries were responsible for 1.9 million deaths in 2016.
It’s shocking to see so many people literally die from their jobs, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that he expected the report to be a “wake-up call”.
The study looked at 19 occupational risk factors including long working hours as well as workplace exposure to air pollution, asthma, carcinogens and noise.
This showed that there was a disproportionate number of work-related deaths among workers in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific, among men, and among those over the age of 54.
The study builds on WHO’s earlier findings that long working hours were leading to the death of about 745,000 people a year from stroke and heart disease.
The comprehensive report published Friday found that another big workplace killer was exposure to air pollution such as gases and smoke, as well as small particulates linked to industrial emissions. The report found that air pollution was responsible for 450,000 deaths in 2016.
The injuries took the lives of 360,000 people. On the positive side, the number of work-related deaths relative to the population declined by 14% between 2000 and 2016, the report found, which may reflect improvements in workplace health and safety.
However, it also said that the work-related burden of the disease was “much larger” than anticipated. WHO technical official Frank Pega said other deaths, including those from rising heatwaves linked to climate change, were not currently included, and neither were communicable diseases such as COVID-19.
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