Are you prepared for the safety risks of the modern workplace?

Did you know that today firefighters have only 3 to 5 minutes to safely exit a burning building? Thirty years ago, it was 15 minutes – up to five times longer. The world is changing – the building materials we use, the planet’s warming climate, our exposure to diseases – all these and more affect our health and safety at work. Episode 12 of Just Europe – the EU’s podcast series exploring the challenges we face on the path towards a fair and inclusive Europe – takes a closer look at occupational health and safety, and what it means in the 21st century.

The world is changing, and so are the risks

It’s not just the different construction materials in use today that make fighting fires riskier; buildings now also contain solar panels and energy electrical systems. And let’s not forget electrical vehicles and the fires they are causing. With new technologies come new risks for all workers.

As Maria Albin, a researcher involved in the EU-funded EPHOR project, explains in the podcast, many exposures are closely associated, so if you are exposed to one disease-causing factor, you’re often also exposed to other disease-causing factors at the same time. For construction workers, for instance, it would be welding fumes, noise, a heavy physical workload – and these obviously add up.

Climate change and the green transition are also playing a bigger and bigger part in changing occupational health and safety risks. According to William Cockburn Salazar, Executive Director of EU-OSHA, 1 in 3 workers in some European countries are experiencing extremely high temperatures or very poor air quality. Firefighters are dealing with more wildfires, forestry workers with new mosquito-borne diseases, and commercial divers building and repairing offshore wind farms face dangers such as high-voltage electricity, entanglement in cables and water pressure-related illnesses.

So, how well-equipped are we today to manage these combined exposures? According to Klaus Heeger, Secretary General at European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions, the easy part is to say we simply limit the exposure to a hazard by adapting shifts, using proper equipment and harnessing AI for better work organisation. The difficulty, in his view, arises when exposure cannot be reduced any further – when the challenge becomes identifying what can still be done to limit the risk.

How to build a safer work environment

For Rober Marinkovic, Adviser at the International Organization of Employers, there is no magic solution. However, it’s important to have a data gathering system and diagnostic tools in place, a good culture of communication between workers and employers, and an environment in which workers feel safe bringing up issues.

In short, to ensure a safe and healthy workforce: