HSE launches new workplace health expert committee

WHEC to provide expert opinion on issues of concern relating to workplace ill health

THE Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has appointed a new committee to provide independent expert knowledge and advice on workplace health.

The workplace health expert committee (WHEC) will be made up of nine members who will provide expert opinion on emerging issues and trends, new evidence relating to existing issues, and on the quality and relevance of the evidence base on workplace health issues.

Working under the leadership of an independent expert chair, the WHEC will provide scientific and medical advice to the HSE’s chief scientific advisor and director of research, Prof. Andrew Curran, and to the HSE’s board.

The committee will encourage collaborative working with stakeholders and partners whilst helping to identify issues of potential concern to government departments and business.

In particular, the WHEC will focus on chemical and physical hazards and human behavioural or organizational factors in the workplace (such as shift work) that could lead to physiological and psychosocial ill health.

The committee will not focus on well-being, sickness absence management or rehabilitation, as these issues are dealt with elsewhere in government, nor will it consider individual cases of ill health or disease.

Prof. Andrew Curran said he was very pleased to have secured a world-class team of experts in workplace health issues to supplement the HSE’s own in-house expertise in this area.

‘Our statistics show that around 13,000 people die each year from occupational lung disease and cancer as a consequence of past workplace exposures, primarily to chemicals and dusts. In addition, an estimated 1.2 million people who worked in 2013/14 were suffering from an illness they believed was caused or made worse by work, of which 535,000 were new cases which started in the year,’ he said.

‘I look forward to working with the committee to help us develop new strategies to reduce these and other causes of workplace ill health.’

Prof. Sir Anthony Newman Taylor, chair of the committee, added: ‘Policy for health and safety needs to be informed by the best contemporary scientific evidence. It is our role to provide the HSE with robust evaluation of emerging evidence of new hazards and new evidence of well-recognized hazards.’