Lawford Kidd's Blog

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) has launched a two year Europe-wide campaign to tackle stress at work.

The prevalence of work-related stress in Europe is startling, says EU-OSHA. Its latest pan-European opinion poll revealed that 51% of workers find work-related stress to be common in their workplace and four in ten workers think that stress is not handled well in their organisation.

However, EU-OSHA believes that together employers and workers can successfully manage and prevent work-related stress and psychosocial risks, and the Healthy Workplaces Campaign aims to help companies do just that.

A recent resolution passed by the European Parliament has called for new technologies to be covered by current EU health and safety rules.

The resolution notes that every year, 168,000 EU citizens die from work-related accidents or diseases and seven million are injured in accidents.

The potential risks of new technologies and harmful substances must be assessed, and legislation drafted to ensure that nanomaterials are covered by the current European Occupational Health and Safety regulation.