China: 200 mn workers exposed to job ailments

Over 200 million Chinese workers have been exposed to various occupational diseases, like lung ailments, at the work place because of hazardous environment.

Occupational disease has overtaken workplace accidents as the biggest danger to Chinese workers with 200 million potentially under threat Tang Chun, an occupational disease expert with the labour protection department under the Federation said.

About 200 million workers in some 16 million enterprises work in hazardous environments.

"The number of new cases concerning occupational disease has been rising in recent years and the 2010 figure, due to be released by the Ministry of Health in April, will undoubtedly pass the 2009 figure of 18,128," he told state run China Daily.

A total of 722,730 cases were reported from 1949 to 2009, and 146,500 lives had been lost to occupational disease, he said.

About 90 per cent of the cases were related to pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease, caused by inhalation of dust, especially mineral or metallic.

"New cases of the incurable lung disease outnumber deaths caused by workplace accidents, which number about 6,000 annually," Tang said.

Yu Wenlan, a health expert with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Daily that only 10 per cent of employees in China receive regular

occupational health services.

The Law on Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases clearly stipulates that employers should provide free health checkups for labourers who work in hazardous conditions and inform them of the results.

"But a majority of small- and medium-sized private enterprises, which account for almost 90 per cent of the country's corporate units, fail to provide such services," Tang said.

"The number of cases revealed would have been shocking if the service had been available for all labourers in those enterprises," he said.

Migrant workers account for a large number of cases as they work in the most hazardous industries, especially mining, processing of construction materials and electronic manufacturing, he said.

Poor workplace sanitation and safety procedures are usually to blame, he added.

The majority of China's 230 million migrant workers do not have stable employment and regularly change jobs, a situation that employers can easily take advantage of by offering short-term employment often without contracts, Tang said.