Work-related accidents are estimated to provide approximately 5 to 10% of the total disease burden caused by working conditions. The bulk of the disease burden is due to chronic exposure to harmful substances, physical stress and physical factors.

Production, transportation, storage and use of substances can lead to risks at the workplace. The government tries to minimise these risks by regulation.

The obligation to report serious accidents applies only for salaried employees or self-employed if they work under the authority of others. If someone is self-employed and working under his own authority when an accident happens, the accident is not reportable.

The used accident data is taken from the accident database of the Dutch Labour Inspectorate. This database contains investigated reportable accidents.

This chapter will provide guidance on how to estimate environmental exposure. More specifically, it will deal with: Estimation of the releases to air, water (either wastewater and/or surface water), and soil at local and regional scale.Fate and distribution of the releases in environmental compartments (air, soil, surface water, sediment, biota) and sewage treatment plants. Calculation of exposure concentrations in / doses for, respectively: Environmental compartments (Section R.16.6.1), in terms of Predicted Environmental Concentrations (PECs), at both local and regional scales, covering both direct exposure of organisms and exposure via the food chain for predators. Man via the environment (Section R.16.6.8) in terms of human daily intake of the substance through drinking water, fish, leaf crops, root crops, meat and dairy products, at local and regional scale. Most of the current guidance on environmental exposure estimation has been developed mainly for organic substances. Metals and metal compounds present particularities (natural background and historical releases, speciation, adsorption/desorption behaviour, differences in bioavailability) which require specific adaptations when performing the exposure assessment. These issues are considered in the Appendix R.7.13-2.

Prof. Reinskje Talhout is an experienced researcher in the field of reinforcing harmful products, such as tobacco and nicotine products, drugs, alcohol and energy drinks. She currently serves as the leading expert and head of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Tobacco Product Regulation and Control, hosted by RIVM. In addition, one day each week, she works as special professor of Product appeal and prevention of harmful consumption behaviour at Wageningen University & Research. This chair was set up in response to the demand in society to reduce the appeal of reinforcing harmful products, particularly to young people.

M.S. (Mattijs) Lambooij, PhD, is a senior researcher in the department of Health Services Research and Health Economics at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, RIVM.

Additional analyses on specific consumption data have been carried out, on request of different institutes.

NoroNet update september 2012