Occupational illness

Like any responsible employer, we take steps to minimise any occurrences of illnesses that develop as a result of conditions in our workplaces.  However, because of the nature of our business, we are also especially vigilant towards diseases caused by exposure to excessive dust and noise, and also to radiation.

The nature of occupational illnesses is changing. Illnesses such as stress, fatigue, muscular skeletal and the normal results of ageing such as heart disease and reduced physical capacity present different challenges to the traditional mining health issues.

How we manage occupational illness

We treat an illness as 'occupational' if workplace conditions are thought to worsen it.  We do not require the workplace to be the only cause.  However, some workers are more sensitive than others to contracting workplace-related diseases and this is why we put emphasis on prevention by monitoring.

In 2004, our Occupational Health Standards were established to improve the flow of information on health issues to managers, so that they could take a more active role in prevention. It has also enabled us to collect more accurate data on workplace conditions and institute minimum conditions to contractors.

We also have active programmes to:

• Improve wellbeing.
• Spread best practice on active fatigue management.
• Ensure effective malaria control. 
• Survey the effects of dust on health in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

In addition, our managers benefit from an internal web portal where they share best practice advice and information.

One example of how well our programmes are working can be seen in the decreasing rate of illnesses that are related to dust. Dust control at our mines has eliminated any new cases of miner's lung, and similar measures at our aluminium smelters has virtually eradicated any new instances of asthma.

Our results

Overview

In 2004, we set a stretch target to reduce the number of new cases of occupational illness by 40 per cent between the period 2003-2008. We met this ambitious target by achieving a 69% reduction in new cases of illness since 2003.

Setting aggressive targets for noise exposure have resulted in improved data and better knowledge of workers' noise exposures. Reducing employee exposure to noise in the workplace will continue to be an area of focus in 2007.

Although we remain behind trajectory to achieve our target of a 20 per cent reduction in exposures to 85 decibel noise, we saw a 1.3 per cent improvement in 2006 from the 2004 baseline.