IDENTIFICATION OF EMERGING OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH RISKS

New technologies as well as shifting economic, social and demographic conditions lead to continuously changing work environments and let emerge new occupational safety and health (OSH) risks. Due to this development the assessment and analysis of emerging occupational risks play an important role to ensure most early identification and efficient prevention, thus contributing to the health and well- being of workers and strengthening the economic competitiveness of companies. Therefore, in 2002, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work set up a "Risk Observatory". One of the aims of the Risk Observatory is to anticipate emerging risks and their likely consequences for safety and health at work and to develop an information system for new research findings on emerging OSH risks to communicate the findings. With the help of the Delphi method the views of international experts were brought together in a forecast on what might be the most important emerging OSH risks for workers in Europe. These surveys are complemented by a collection of published information on new research findings on emerging risks. The identification of four different types of risks was taken into consideration in order to provide as complete as possible a picture of the world of work. The forecasting activities cover: (a) physical risks, (b) organisational, social and human risks as well as (c) biological and (d) chemical risks - without excluding multifactorial risks, which may be found in several of these categories. This paper depicts the final results obtained by the surveys for all investigated types of risks (physical, psychosocial, biological and chemical risks) and describes the methods made use of in this European survey.