The IOSH’s No Time to Lose campaign was launched in 2014 in order to raise awareness amongst industry workers about occupational cancer. The campaign is spread around the world and provides businesses with free and useful resources to protect their workforce against and minimise the risks.
The high-profile campaign has reached a new height as it has had their 100th organisation sign up in order to pledge their support to raising awareness about work-related cancers. This milestone has been reached after Wills Bros Civil Engineering Ltd signed up to the No Time to Lose pledge that includes a six-part plan that covers the important actions of organisations that are wanting to manage the exposure to carcinogens within their workplace. The action plan can be accessed by those who are planning to make changes as well as those who are already in the middle of addressing the exposure risks.
The Executive Director of Policy at IOSH, Shelly Frost has been part of the announcement of the 100th pledger during last week’s Global Asbestos Awareness Week. It has been estimated that 666,000 deaths each year worldwide are in connection to cancer that can be related back to causes from work. The biggest killer as part of this figure is asbestos, but other carcinogens such as diesel fumes, silica dust and solar radiation are also causes of workplace cancers.
It is thought that through the use of the campaign and the efforts of the pledged businesses that now nearly half a million employees around the world are aware of the carcinogens mentioned above that they could come into contact with through their jobs. Although it is great to see that the campaign is expanding, there is still a lot more work that needs to be done in order to significantly reduce deaths due to carcinogen exposure in the workplace.
It has been announced that next year the campaign will be releasing free resources in order to help businesses around the world raise awareness of as well as manage the exposure risk of asbestos. The campaign aims to get rid of occupational cancer.
