The impact of REACH on occupational health with a focus on skin and respiratory diseases

90.000 occupational disease cases will be avoided in Europe, saving 3.5 billion euros over 10 years for the EU-25. These are the mind-boggling figures to come out of this ETUC report. The study on how REACH will benefit workers' health was done by researchers from the University of Sheffield, looking chiefly at respiratory and skin diseases.

Adopting an ambitious REACH should help bring down the numbers of these diseases that have been steadily rising for half a century. Everyone will win out - social security systems, through reduced costs; workers, through a better quality of life; and not least employers, who will avoid productivity losses from sickness-related absences.