Who we are
Health
An important element of our sustainable development approach is the health and wellbeing of our employees, contractors and the people in the communities in which we operate.
The nature of occupational illnesses is changing. Illnesses such as stress, fatigue, and musculo-skeletal, and the normal results of ageing such as heart disease and reduced physical capacity present different challenges to the traditional mining health issues. One of the most important occupational health issues we face are the risks associated with an ageing workforce and their ability to continue to perform their roles injury and illness free.
We are committed to reaching our goal of no new cases of occupational illness and believe that we will only achieve this through promoting the good health of all our employees and contractors. Supporting healthy lifestyles reduces health related risks such as fatigue and obesity, and improves productivity.
In 2007, more than 77 per cent of our employees worked at operations that had implemented health and wellness programmes. We have developed a leading practice "promotion of wellness" model that will be introduced to more than 6,000 workers and their families across 21 sites in Australia in 2008. On demonstrating its effectiveness, this model will be recommended to the rest of the Group.
Although mechanisation and automation are rapidly reducing the physical demands of our work, musculo-skeletal illnesses remain the most common cause of new occupational illnesses at 34 per cent.
Noise induced hearing loss from heavy equipment accounted for 12 per cent of our reported health incidents in 2007. We are reducing employee exposure to noise in the workplace through engineering solutions and alternative ways of doing our work.
Since 2004 we have achieved a 5.8 per cent reduction in employee exposure to a noise environment of more than 85 decibels. Although the majority of this improvement was achieved during 2007, we have considerable work ahead to meet our target of a 20 per cent reduction in the number of employees (per 10,000 employees) exposed to noise between 2004 and 2008. The drive to achieve this aggressive target has resulted in improved data and better knowledge of workers' noise exposures.
In 2003 we set a stretch target to reduce the number of new cases of occupational illness by 40 per cent. We met this ambitious target and at the end of 2007 the number of cases was 38 per cent lower than in 2006 and 81 per cent lower than in 2003.
Rio Tinto is operating in countries where the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is high. We are working closely with the international community of government agencies and NGOs concerned with these problems not only in Africa, but globally. For example, where we have operations located in regions with a generalised HIV epidemic (as defined by UNAIDS) we actively encourage all employees to know their HIV status through voluntary testing. We also require that all employees and their nominated partner have affordable access to treatment, care and support, including antiretroviral drugs.
Some other key steps in our occupational health management in 2007 were:
- extending voluntary counselling and testing of HIV to over 70 per cent of employees at Richards Bay Minerals in South Africa. The programme also highlighted 200 cases of other chronic diseases;
- developing workplace exposure limits for high temperature work in conjunction with trade associations and implementing practical solutions where possible;
- commencing work on developing the science needed to set workplace exposure limits for copper; and
- Rio Tinto chaired the ICMM committee that produced practical guidelines on the management of tuberculosis, malaria and HIV in the workplace.
We have begun to integrate the Rio Tinto and Alcan approaches to occupational health. At the strategic level, the two companies had similar programmes: active reduction of health risks, promotion of wellness and HIV/AIDS management. At the detailed level more work is needed to align our reporting definitions. The inclusion of Alcan changes our health risk profile with an increased proportion of smelters.
