Our goal is to eliminate occupational disease in the Group by implementing effective practices to manage exposures in the workplace. This includes both employees and contractors and our occupational health standards have minimum requirements for contractor health management. However, because of the difficulties in collecting accurate occupational data data for contractors, the data reported here relate to employees only.

People vary greatly in their sensitivity to workplace conditions; some may develop a disease at very low exposures, most only after high exposures. Hence, protection against new cases of occupational disease requires both understanding and control of workplace exposures and detection of the more sensitive worker, often by periodic health monitoring. Our reporting focuses on three main areas:

• New cases of occupational disease: There were 341 new cases of occupational disease in 2003, equating to a rate of 107 new cases per 10,000 employees;
• Exposures in the workplace, such as noise, dust and radiation, provide a leading indicator of whether operations are being managed to prevent new cases of occupational disease: higher rates of workplace exposures have been reported in 2003. This is most likely a result of increased monitoring of workplace conditions, as required by the occupational health standards; and
• Management systems for occupational health.

In 2003, for the first time, we collected information on fines for infringement of occupational health and safety regulations separately. There was one fine of US$875 for infringement of occupational health regulations reported in 2003. This was in relation to a citation received by Kennecott Utah Copper during an inspection in late 2002. A control room was found to have lead contamination. Housekeeping policies and procedures have been revised and this issue has now been resolved.