Introduction
Occupational And Environmental Medicine is a component of Encyclopedia of Environmental and Ecological Sciences, Engineering and Technology Resources in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias.
This book brings together all the elements that go to make up the discipline of occupational health and safety – the setting (work), the means of preventing work induced illness and injury and the devastating consequences of poor health and safety at work – responsible for more deaths worldwide than those caused by road accidents, war, violence and AIDS combined. To ignore occupational health and safety is to accept the worldwide scandal of 6200 people dying every day from occupational accidents or work-related diseases – an economic burden estimated at 4% of global gross domestic product per year. This volume describes in detail the consequences of this failure in terms of disease, disability and deaths and how good systems of health and safety at work can reduce the burden and improve working people's health and well-being.
The volume is aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers, NGOs and GOs.
Editor(s) Biography
David Snashall is Emeritus Professor of Occupational Medicine, Kings College London and Honorary Consultant, Occupational Health and Safety Services, Guy‟s and St Thomas‟ NHS Foundation Trust. He has also held posts as Chief Medical Adviser, Health and Safety Executive (1998-2003) and Chief Medical Adviser, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (1989-1998). During 1989-1996 he was a Member of the General Medical Council and during 2005-2008, President of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of London.
He has worked as an occupational physician for 40 years in the UK and abroad, with particular interests in the health of construction workers, expatriates and those working in the health care sector. He trained in medicine at Edinburgh University, in occupational medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and in medical law at the University of Wales.
He chaired the Health and Safety Executive‟s Research Ethics Committee until recently, was external examiner for the Master‟s course in occupational medicine at the University of Cardiff and is still a member of the Independent Medical Expert Group advising the Ministry of Defence on the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme and co-editor of the textbook “ABC of Occupational and Environmental Medicine”, now in its 3rd edition.
