Occupational Health could be said have started with
the Italian doctor Bernadino Ramazzini in the early part of 18th
century when he set into motion a drive for recognition of the role of
occupations in the dynamics of health and disease. Occupational Health
progressed through the rest of the industrial revolution under
the Italian doctor Bernadino Ramazzini in the early part of 18th
century when he set into motion a drive for recognition of the role of
occupations in the dynamics of health and disease. Occupational Health
progressed through the rest of the industrial revolution under
the title of
industrial medicine, right up to and even after the joint Worlds Health
Organization / International Labour Organization Expert Committee on
Occupational Health defined it and set its objectives at that committee’s first
meeting in 1950. That meaning also sought to overcome the limitations imposed
on the discipline by the older term and to expand its vision as sought to include
all occupations “industrial” or “non-industrial”, notably agriculture.
In summary, that definition outlines occupational
health as the sum total of all the activities and programmes that are engaged
upon aiming to attain and maintain the highest level of health and safety for
all people who are engaged in any type of work whatever. Occupational health
does this through the approaches of disease prevention, safety assurance and
general health promotion. The methods include those of manipulation of the work
environment so as to make it conducive to the average man’s physiological and
anthropometric make up; and in addition, to specifically in each individual
worker to his work, (health-wise) so as to take account also especially of
those who may not be average in their human make-up. These people ought to have
been protected by the primary environmental manipulated function of
occupational health practice if they had been “normal” persons (i.e., of normal
health.
health as the sum total of all the activities and programmes that are engaged
upon aiming to attain and maintain the highest level of health and safety for
all people who are engaged in any type of work whatever. Occupational health
does this through the approaches of disease prevention, safety assurance and
general health promotion. The methods include those of manipulation of the work
environment so as to make it conducive to the average man’s physiological and
anthropometric make up; and in addition, to specifically in each individual
worker to his work, (health-wise) so as to take account also especially of
those who may not be average in their human make-up. These people ought to have
been protected by the primary environmental manipulated function of
occupational health practice if they had been “normal” persons (i.e., of normal
health.
