OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY & HEALTH

Occupational safety and health (OSH) or occupational safety, is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at work (i.e. in an occupation). These terms also refer to the goals of this field, so their use in the sense of this article was originally an abbreviation of occupational safety and health program/department etc. The goal of an occupational safety and health program is to foster a safe and healthy occupational environment. OSH also protects all the general public who may be affected by the occupational environment.

Globally, more than 2.78 million people die annually as a result of workplace-related accidents or diseases, corresponding to one death every fifteen seconds. There are an additional 374 million non-fatal work-related injuries annually. It is estimated that the economic burden of occupational-related injury and death is nearly four percent of the global gross domestic product each year. The human cost of this adversity is enormous.