This month, State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) issued the newly revised Catalogue of Occupational Hazardous Factors along with National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) and Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS). The new catalogue takes immediate effect and has replaced its previous version which was issued on March 11th 2002.
The occupational hazardous factors are determined based on the following criteria:
They may cause occupational diseases that are listed in the Catalogue of Occupational Diseases.
They appear as pathogenic factors in the published diagnosis standards of occupational diseases, or there are already exposure limit and test methods specified for them.
There is a certain population that is exposed to them.
The factors of higher exposure frequency and greater hazards are chosen with priority.
The main revisions made in the new Catalogue include:
The new Catalogue adjusts and combines some hazardous factors categories. In the new Catalogue, the hazardous factors are divided into 6 categories, which are dust, chemical factors, physical factors, radioactive factors, biological factors and other factors.
The new Catalogue further details the factors. For example, there are 316 factors added into chemical factors.
The new Catalogue cancels the industry examples. The previous catalogue gave many examples of different industries and production methods that could cause occupational diseases. However, with the rapid development of production processes, examples quickly become outdated and inaccurate. The new Catalogue deletes these examples and leaves open terms for hazardous factors.
The new Catalogue of Occupational Hazardous Factors can be downloaded here.
