The European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER) asks managers and workers' health and safety representatives about how health and safety risks are managed at their workplace, with a particular focus on the newer ‘psychosocial risks’, such as work-related stress, violence and harassment. This report presents an overview of the results from a first analysis of the data, which is drawn from 36,000 interviews carried out in 31 countries.
The report shows that emergency workers have a high risk of suffering fatal accidents, injuries and other occupational diseases. Past disasters demonstrate that both communities and companies are often not fully prepared for major accidents and catastrophes. Better protection for emergency workers against occupational hazards should be given high priority, as current environmental, economic, and political developments suggest an increase in the severity and frequency of future disasters.
In 2009 and 2010, the Agency commissioned an update to its previous research on gender issues at work , which found that inequality both inside and outside the workplace can have an effect on the health and safety of women at work. This summary provides a policy perspective and is meant to contribute to the task outlined by the European strategy on health and safety at work for EU-OSHA’s European Risk Observatory, “examining the specific challenges in terms of health and safety posed by the more extensive integration of women in the labour market”. It provides a statistical overview of the trends in employment and working conditions, hazard exposure and work-related accidents and health problems for women at work. It explores selected issues (combined exposures, occupational cancer, access to rehabilitation, women and informal work, and “emerging” female professions such as home care and domestic work). The research highlights the type of work carried out by women, issues faced by younger and older women, the growth of the service sector, violence and harassment, and increasingly diversified working time patterns as major risk factors.
The report of Phase 2 of the “Foresight of new and emerging risks associated with new technologies in green jobs by 2020” identifies a shortlist of key technologies likely to be found in green jobs and have an impact on OSH by 2020. The list includes green technologies in the construction, transport, manufacturing, waste treatment and wind energy sectors; nanotechnologies; bioenergy and biotechnology; electricity transmission and storage; and domestic applications of emerging energy technologies. In Phase 3, a series of workshops is exploring the potential emerging OSH risks from these technologies in order to develop future scenarios helping decision makers to anticipate these risks.