Los accidentes de trabajo y las enfermedades

Una aproximación desde la ergonomía

Abstract

It is argued here that most labour medicine assessment of in-work accidents and professional diseases is doubtful and limited. This is so because labour health is often assessed with restricted scope about wider and more complex problems. This results in common assessments claiming that 'the workers are to be blamed for their accidents or diseases since they are neglectful, lacking responsibility, not caring, etc.' Even when this is partially true, in order to achieve fair and objective assessment results it is necessary to take into account the health risks inherent to the ergonomic problems of the equipment for workers' personal safty and to those inherent to the lack of such equipment. This paper contributes to the study of this problem by proposing an ergonomic methodological approach to the evaluation of labour health risks.