Theme and topics

Continuous changes in work and working conditions give rise to new occupational health risks and new occupational diseases. The health consequences of new technologies, as well as the currently unknown effects of existing technologies, create reasons for concern among the working population, people professionally involved in work and health, policymakers and insurers.
 
There is insufficient knowledge about possible new occupational health risks. As a result, new risks are detected too late and the opportunities to prevent or treat the resulting damage to health are impeded. By conducting risk assessments in a timely manner, an attempt is made to control the risks of new technologies. The European REACH program, which came into effect on 1 July 2007, is an example of this. Another example is the establishment of the European Agency for Health and Safety at Work in Bilbao, Spain as a ‘Risk Observatory’ with a special focus on ‘Emerging Risks’. Because the risk-management approach is based on experience and knowledge from the past, it can be unsatisfactory in terms of identifying and tackling new occupational risks. Moreover, the occurrence of a health effect is often the first indication of a new occupational risk.
 
The ‘disease-first approach’ is a way to detect new, adverse occupational health consequences by incident notifications of cases or clusters of possible occupational diseases that are assessed, weighted and translated into preventive actions. This approach is comparable to analyzing and learning from occupational accidents, which is now common practice. We can also learn from experiences with identifying the adverse effects of drugs: although drugs have undergone extensive testing for safety in the research phase, they may produce unexpected and sometimes serious adverse effects after introduction to the market. More than 30 years’ experience of identifying the adverse effects of drugs has shown that a notification system can make a valuable contribution to post-marketing surveillance. ‘Pharmacovigilance’ has thus become an important source of information.
 
The scope of this congress is restricted to the detection of new occupational consequences of work on health and ways towards better OHS-vigilance.
 
Topics:
  • Methodology
  • Early warning systems
  • New Musculoskeletal Disorders
  • New Occupational Cancers
  • New Occupational Dermatoses
  • New Occupational Infectious Diseases
  • New work-related Psychological Disorders
  • New Occupational Lung Diseases
  • New Occupational Neurologic Diseases
  • New work-related Reproductive Disorders
  • New work-related Cardiovascular Diseases
  • New Miscellaneous Occupational Diseases
  • Contested Occupational Diseases
  • Preventive strategies