GENEVA, Sept. 17 Reuters -- Nearly 2 million people die each year from work related causes, including from illnesses associated with long working hours and high air pollution, estimated by U.N. agencies on Friday.
The study by the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization, the first assessment of its kind, found that work-related diseases and injuries were responsible for the deaths of 1.9 million people in 2016.
It's shocking to see so many people literally dying by their jobs, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, declaring he hoped the report would be a wake up call. The study considers 19 occupational risk factors including long working hours but also workplace exposure to air pollution, asthmagens, carcinogens and noise.
It showed that a disproportionate number of work-related deaths occured in the workers in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific, among males and older adults.
The study builds on earlier WHO findings that long working hours were killing approximately 745,000 people a year through strokes and heart disease.
The broader report published on Friday found that another big workplace killer was exposure to air pollution such as gases and fumes, as well as tiny particles associated with industrial emissions.
Air pollution was responsible for over 450,000 deaths in 2016, the report found. On the positive side, the number of work-related deaths relative to population decreased by 14% between 2000 and 2016 the report said, adding that this may reflect improvements in workplace health and safety.
However, it also said that the disease-related burden was probably substantially larger than expected.
Frank Pega, WHO technical officer, said that other deaths - including those from rising heat associated with climate change were not currently included and nor were Communicable diseases such as COVID - 19.