12^th World Congress on Industrial Health, Healthcare and Medical Tourism October 16-17, 2017 Dubai,UAE

Occupational health and safety is a multidisciplinary field of healthcare concerned with the health, safety, and welfare of individuals at their occupation. The objectives of occupational safety and health programs include creating a safe and healthy work environment. Occupational health and safety may also protect family members, co-workers, employers, customers, and many other people who might be affected by the workplace environment. Occupational health deals with all facets of health and safety in the workplace and has a strong emphasis on primary prevention of hazards.

An occupational hazard is a threat experienced in the workplace. Occupational hazards can include many types of hazards, including chemical hazards, biological hazards, psychosocial hazards, and physical hazards. Chemical hazards are a subtype of occupational hazards that include harmful chemicals. Exposure to chemicals in the workplace can cause acute or long-term detrimental health effects. There are various categories of hazardous chemicals, including neurotoxins, dermatologic agents, immune agents, carcinogens, asthmagens, systemic toxins, pneumoconiotic agents, reproductive toxins, and sensitizers.

An occupational disease is any chronic illness that occurs as a result of occupational activity. It is a part of occupational safety and health. An occupational disease is generally recognized when it is shown that it is more predominant in workers than in the other general population, or in other workers. Preventive measures include avoiding the irritant through its eradication from the workplace or irritant replacement or removal and individual protection of the workers.

Risk assessment mainly deals with identification of hazards, analysing and evaluating the risks associated. The appropriate ways to curb or to control the hazards is also studied. The General Approaches to Risk assessment involves techniques help in creating awareness regarding the different potential hazards, identifying the people who pose the major risk due to the biohazards; formulate the control measures and prioritizing the hazards and control measures. The methods of hazard control can be mainly categorized under Elimination which also includes substitution, Environmental Engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment. Risk Assessment involves a lot of documentation such as hazard review, risks associated with the hazards, control measures implemented accordingly.

Ergonomics is concerned with the process of designing workplaces, products and systems so that they fit to those people who use them. Ergonomics or human factors is a branch of science that aims to learn about human abilities and limitations, and then apply this learning to develop people’s interaction with products, systems and environments. Ergonomics aims to improve workspaces and environments to reduce the risk of injury or harm. So as technologies change, so too does the need to ensure that the tools we access for work, rest and play are designed for our body’s requirements.

Epidemiology is reviewing and investigating the patterns, root causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined populations. It is the basis of public health, and forms policy decisions and evidence-based practice by recognizing risk factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare. Epidemiologists assist with study design, statistical analysis and collection of data, modify interpretation and dissemination of results. Epidemiology has helped to develop methods used in clinical research, public health studies, and, basic research in the biological sciences. Areas of epidemiological studies include outbreak investigation, disease causation, disease surveillance, biomonitoring, transmission, forensic epidemiology and screening, and comparisons of treatment effects such as in clinical trials.

Occupational toxicology deals with the chemicals in the workplace. The major emphasis of occupational toxicology is to identify the agents of concern, identify the acute and chronic diseases that they cause, define the conditions under which they may be used safely, and prevent absorption of harmful amounts of these chemicals. Occupational toxicologists may also define and carry out occupational safety programs for the surveillance of exposed workers and the environment in which they work. Regulatory limits and voluntary guidelines have been elaborated to establish safe ambient air concentrations for many chemicals found in the workplace.

Chemical toxicology is a subspecialty of toxicology that focuses on the structure of chemical agents and how it affects their mechanism of action on living organisms. It is a multidisciplinary field that includes computational and synthetic chemistry, in addition to people who specialize in the fields of proteomics, metabolomics, drug discovery, drug metabolism, bioinformatics, analytical chemistry, biological chemistry and molecular epidemiology. It depends on technological advances to help understand the chemical components of toxicology more systematically.

Genetic toxicology is the study of the chemical and physical effects on genetic material. It includes the study of DNA damage in living cells that leads to cancer, but it also examines changes in DNA that can be inherited from one generation to the next. The permanent, inherited changes can affect either somatic cells of the organism or germ cells to be passed on to future generations. Cells prevent expression of the genotoxic mutation by either DNA repair or apoptosis; however, the damage may not always be fixed leading to mutagenesis.