Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 82 
exposures. The WHO/ILO study estimated the highest AF for the risk pair asbestos and mesothelioma, 
for occupational ergonomic factors and back and neck pain, and for some types of occupational injuries. 
 
Table 24: Examples of fractions of diseases attributable to work (AF) – WHO/ILO215 
 
 
In 2021, the WHO and ILO published their estimates of the burden of work-related diseases, named the 
‘WHO/ILO joint estimates of the work -related burden of disease and injury, 2000- 2016’.216 WHO/ILO 
calculates for the EU27 114,000 work-related deaths per year in 2016. When setting the absolute 
number of work -related deaths (114,000) in relation to the EU27  population above 16 years (371 
million) in 2016, this results in approximately 31 deaths per 100,000 population in working age above 
16 years.217  
The second reference estimate was provided by the International Commission on Occupational 
Health (ICOH). The size of the two major health consequences (‘Outcomes’) was calculated, that is, 
work-related deaths, and work-related diseases. ICOH estimates in total 179,000 deaths; moreover, 
they refer to the much smaller labour force  population (209 million) and calculate 89 work-related 
deaths per 100,000 labour force . The main reason for these different estimates is the general 
approach: WHO/ILO restricts their analysis to selected risk -outcome pairs, for example, long working 
hours as risk and stroke as outcome, whereas ICOH aspired to cover all work-related diseases.