Although work is generally considered to be good for your health and a healthy working population is essential to a country’s
economic and social development, certain kinds of work can be damaging. Occupational health is the study of the effect—good
and bad—of work on peoples’ health and, conversely, the effect of peoples’ health on their work: fitness for work in other words.
Work places are specialised environments, capable of being closely controlled. Generally, it is the lack of control imposed by
employers that is the cause of ill health because of exposure to hazardous materials and agents at work, and of injury caused by
workplace accidents.
Working life does not, however, begin and end at the factory gate or the revolving office door: many people walk, cycle, or
drive to work—a journey that often constitutes the major hazard of the day. Others have to drive or travel by other means as part
of their job, live away from home, be exposed to other food, other people, other parasites. Even work from home, increasing in
some countries, can have its problems. Occupational health practitioners deal with all these aspects of working life.
A working population consists of people mainly between 15 and 70 years (disregarding for the moment the ongoing scandal
that is child labour), who may be exposed for 8-12 hours a day to a relatively high concentration of toxic substances or agents,
physical or psychological. At least that population is likely to be reasonably fit—unlike those who cannot work because of illness or
disabilities, the young, and the very old, who are more vulnerable and spend a lifetime exposed to many of the same agents in the
general environment at lower concentration. This enters the realm of environmental medicine of such concern to those who
monitor the degradation of our planet, track pollution and climate change, and note the effect of natural disasters and man made
ones, especially wars