The value of occupational safety and health and the societal costs of work-related injuries and diseases

This report details the findings of the second stage of EU-OSHA’s project to estimate the costs of occupational injuries, diseases and deaths at European level. Two approaches are developed to estimate costs: a bottom-up approach based on individual components of costs — direct, indirect and intangible costs, and a top-down approach based on international data on the economic burden of injury and disease.

The cost estimations focus on five countries — Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Poland — for which sufficient data are available and which are representative of Europe’s diverse geography, industries and social systems. The results of each model are compared, the strengths and weaknesses considered, and implications for policy-makers explored.