Technological Advancements in Occupational Health and Safety

Abstract Work has a major impact on the health of the community. Occupational hazards exist in every workplace, only the type of the hazard or the intensity of the hazard might differ. Recent trends reveal that there has been a huge jump in the number of occupational injuries despite various legal reforms being introduced. Understanding the impact of these hazards on the workers is the need of the hour. This chapter aims to identify these risk factors about which every worker needs to be aware to take immediate actions to avoid any workplace fatalities. These risks have been categorized into various categories like biological, chemical, physiological hazards, etc. The second aim of the chapter is to discuss the basic hierarchical strategic model to overcome these hazards in the workplace or at least reduce them in few cases. However, it has been observed that these strategies or legal reforms are not enough to eliminate workplace hazards. Hence, the idea of equipping workers with wearable technology for real-time monitoring of the workers and eliminating the potential hazards from workplaces is crucial. Several existing devices which have been proven to be effective for ensuring workplace safety have been discussed in this chapter.