Provides guidance for national labour statisticians engaged in or proposing to start the compilation of statistics on occupational injuries through household surveys or establishment surveys.

At its 279th Session (November 2000) the Governing Body of the International Labour Office decided to place an item on the recording and notification of occupational accidents and diseases, including the possible revision of the list of occupational diseases, Schedule I to the Employment Injury Benefits Convention, 1964 (No. 121), on the agenda of the 90th Session (2002) of the International Labour Conference, with a view to standard setting under the single-discussion procedure. The Governing Body also indicated that the development of a mechanism for regularly updating the list of occupational diseases should be examined by the Conference as part of the above agenda item. Owing to the limited time frame for the preparation of this law and practice report, it has been prepared on the basis of materials provided by member States in reply to past surveys, meetings of experts and other sources available at the International Labour Office.

As the debate over health care reform continues, costs have become a critical measure in the many plans and proposals to come before us. Knowing costs is important because it allows comparisons across such disparate health conditions as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, and cancer. This book presents the results of a major study estimating the large and largely overlooked costs of occupational injury and illness--costs as large as those for cancer and over four times the costs of AIDS. The incidence and mortality of occupational injury and illness were assessed by reviewing data from national surveys and applied an attributable-risk-proportion method. Costs were assessed using the human capital method that decomposes costs into direct categories such as medical costs and insurance administration expenses, as well as indirect categories such as lost earnings and lost fringe benefits. The total is estimated to be $155 billion and is likely to be low as it does not include costs associated with pain and suffering or of home care provided by family members. Invaluable as an aid in the analysis of policy issues, Costs of Occupational Injuryand Illness will serve as a resource and reference for economists, policy analysts, public health researchers, insurance administrators, labor unions and labor lawyers, benefits managers, and environmental scientists, among others. J. Paul Leigh is Professor in the School of Medicine, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, University of California, Davis. Stephen Markowitz, M.D., is Professor in the Department of Community Health and Social Medicine, City University of New York Medical School. Marianne Fahs is Director of the Health Policy Research Center, Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, New School University. Philip Landrigan, M.D., is Wise Professor and Chair of the Department of Community Medicine, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York.

These guidelines have been prepared by the International Labour Office in order to assist employers and national organisations with practical advice on implementing and improving occupational safety and health (OSH) management systems, in order to reduce work-related injuries, occupational ill health and diseases and unsafe working conditions. The guidelines may be applied on two levels: they provide a national OSH framework for legal and voluntary regulatory standards; and encourage the integration of OSH management principles with overall policy management at the organisational level.