Give focus to rise in occupational diseases

Lee signing a poster to launch the seminar on Health Hazard Control at Niosh headquarters. Looking on are DOSH deputy director Saiful Azhar Mohd Said (left) and Niosh consultancy, research and development department general manager Khairunnizam Mustapa.

INTERVENTION through engineering control can help organisations and companies reduce occupational diseases that had significantly increased in Malaysia.

National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (Niosh) chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye said engineering control was more effective and efficient in reducing occupational diseases than administrative control and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE).

He said Niosh, being a research institution, could help suggest practical solutions to occupational health (OH) problems and occupational diseases using low-cost but high-impact approach.

Under the 11th Malaysia Plan, he said Niosh had done a study on Exposure and Control of Health Hazards in Industry, which had resulted in the development of 16 engineering interventions to help minimise occupational health problems in 10 specific sectors.

“Some 120 companies participated in the Health Risk Assessment (HRA), where 16 interventions and 10 customised occupational health guidelines were developed for the sectors,” he said after opening a seminar on Health Hazard Control at Niosh headquarters in Bandar Baru Bangi, Selangor.

Lee said OH issues in the workplace had been harder to tackle than safety issues because they usually only manifested after a long period of time, which made concrete relation between the cause and effect difficult to identify.He said the top three cases of occupational diseases were related to noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), musculoskeletal disorders and lung diseases.

“While some cases of ill health are related to work activities, the causes for other illnesses may be less convincing,” said Lee.

“We must give similar attention to OH as how we deal with occupational safety aspect since there was an increase in the number of cases over the years.”

On average, there was about 30% increase in occupational diseases reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Department (DOSH) every year.

“It could be attributed to the increased awareness in the industry to report OH cases at their workplaces. OH has now become a more significant issue in the industry,” he added.

While the big players or multinationals are putting in effort to reduce the risks of injuries or illnesses through effective Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Management System, Lee said many of the smaller enterprises were reluctant to focus on it, mainly because of the cost involved.

“Inability to associate good HSE with good business, lack of care for their workers and ineffective enforcement are among the root causes for this situation,” he noted.

According to the International Labour Organisation, more than 1.1 million people die every year from occupational accidents or work-related diseases in Asia and the Pacific.

Lee said determining occupatio­nal health hazards was complicated since many of the effects occurred commonly in non-occupationally exposed populations.

“The situation is further complicated by the fact that most hazards had not been adequately tested and data did not exist to substantiate their effects,” he pointed out.

“If employers understand the effects of health hazards, they will definitely abide by the law and carry out their responsibility to protect their employees.”