Safety
Occupational health & workplace health protection
We aim to avoid work-related health impairments respectively to recognize them at an early stage and we want to guard against occupational diseases.
To identify job-specific health risks Evonik conducts health risk assessments and site inspections regularly. Based on the findings we define necessary measures for occupational health protection.
Firstly these measures are technical or organizational safety precautions like closed systems to avoid hazardous substances exposures of workers or the use of technical devices for lifting loads. Depending on the type of hazard additional measures can be the use of personal protective equipment, preventive occupational medical care as well as trainings e.g. for safe handling of hazardous substances or ergonomic ways of lifting and carrying of heavy loads.
Within preventive occupational medical care employees receive feedback and advice from the occupational physician concerning their individual work-related health risk. As needed work-related preventive medical checkups are conducted. Here the aim is primarily the early detection of work-related health impairments und the prevention of occupational diseases.
We observe and report continuously the development of newly identified occupational diseases. Our KPI is the Occupational Disease Rate (ODR = defined as the number of newly identified cases of occupational diseases per 1 million working hours).The calculation includes all cases recognized in the reporting period, including long latency diseases (i.e., those where the causes lie many years or even decades in the past).
In 2022, 74 new occupational diseases were approved globally (= ODR 1.11). The ODR is thus significantly higher than in previous years. The unusually high numbers are due to the pandemic and the fact that in the U.S. under OSHA regulations COVID-19 infections acquired at work are counted as occupational diseases. Of the well over 1100 employees who contracted COVID-19 in the USA in 2022, only 34 got infected at work. Nevertheless, this accounts for almost half of the newly recognized occupational diseases.
Without COVID-19 infections, the ODR for 2022 would be 0.6, which is within a normal range for Evonik.
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