Health and Safety Statistics 2017/2018
You may have seen that the March Triquetra EHS newsletter reported on some recently published Health and Safety statistics. Well for those of you more curious about exactly what other numbers are out there have a look at our roundup of the latest news from 2017/20181:
In total 1.4 million working people were suffering from a work-related illness, which in turn caused 26.8 million lost working days. 57% of these working days lost were due to stress, depression or anxiety, 25% due to musculoskeletal disorders, and 18% by any other type of illness.
595,000 workers were suffering from work-related stress, depression or anxiety (new or long-standing) in 2017/18 which equated to 15.4 million working days lost. 44% of people reported this was caused by their workload.
469,000 workers were suffering from work-related musculoskeletal disorders (new or longstanding) in 2017/18, which equated to 6.6 million working days lost. Manual handling, awkward or tiring positions and keyboard work or repetitive action are estimated to be the main causes of work related musculoskeletal disorder.
144 workers were killed at work. There had been a long-term downward trend in the rate of fatal injury until 2012/13; more recently the rate has been broadly flat.
71,062 injuries to employees were reported under RIDDOR. There is a long-term downward trend in RIDDOR reported injuries.
£15.0 billion is the estimated annual costs of work-related injury and new cases of ill health in 2016/17 (excluding long latency illness such as cancer).
Have a look at the wider discussion around these figures on the HSE website. Whilst looking at numbers and statistics may not provide the whole story it gives a good insight into the health, safety and well being of our UK employees.
1(Figures are taken from the HSE. The HSE team who produce and disseminate statistics are all members of the Government Statistical Service. Products and systems are audited by the UK Statistics Authority and have been designated with the National Statistics quality standard)
