Current problems in occupational and environmental health: overview

Reports that among the major current problems in AsiaPacific countries are those due to heat, heavy metals, organic solvents, pesticides, carcinogens, dusts, reproductive hazards, biological hazards, and psychosocial problems, including work stress. The relative importance differs from country to country. For most of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region surveyed, the information concerning the prevalence or incidence of occupational or environmental diseases is either incomplete or very scanty. There is often unreporting of cases or incomplete coverage of preventive programmes for occupational diseases. This is similarly the case for health problems due to environmental factors. However, as Table I shows, conditions from almost the entire range of occupational diseases, physical, chemical, biological and psychosocial, are reported as of considerable importance in all those countries. Noise and vibration, followed by solvents, pesticides, dusts and musculoskeletal disorders, seem to be the most important problems which require addressing. It is of interest that Japan and New Zealand, two of the developed countries in the region, had problems with most of the entities listed, likewise South Australia, one of the Australian states surveyed.