Victorian workers' ills persist today

Factory employees used to work long hours in cramped conditions

"It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves.

"It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye."

Charles Dickens' description of Coketown in his novel Hard Times may sound like a far cry from your average workplace nowadays.

Yet employees today face similar job-related health risks to Victorian workers, as well as some new ones, say occupational health experts.

Accidents and poisonings

Dr Andy Slovak from the Centre of Occupational and Environmental Health at Manchester University said: "In the old days, occupational diseases killed people, which thankfully is less common now.

People are still dying in the construction industry Roger Bibbings, Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents

"The big ones in Victorian times were accidents, for example in coal mining. But there is a direct comparison with the number of people dying in coal mines in China right now.

"Another killer was anthrax in people curing leather hides. You can still see that in Africa."

Chinese cockle pickers drowned recently while working in the UK

"We have simply exported our occupational diseases to other countries, or rather allowed other countries to acquire them" he said.

Similarly, although we now know the dangers of asbestos and no longer use it in manufacturing, it has left a legacy of health problems that are still being seen.

In terms of accidents and industrial poisonings that used to occur, the conditions at work have improved immeasurably, health and safety data shows.

Roger Bibbings of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said: "In the middle of the first world war, just in factories about 1,500 people were killed annually. We now have about 230 workers killed annually.

"People are still dying in the construction industry through falling from heights."

Last year, a temporary ban on cockle picking was put in place in Morecambe Bay after 21 Chinese workers drowned.

New hazards

Some hazards have been stamped out for good, such as "Phossy Jaw" - an occupational hazard for those working with phosphorus, most famously the match girls of the 19th Century who went on strike because of it.

Another is Miners' Nystagmus - a flickering of the eyes that was a result of poor illumination in coal mines.

And hatters are no longer mad, now that people are aware of the risks of mercury poisoning.

But there are new hazards on the horizon.

As people are becoming more mobile, they are having more road accidents.

"We estimate that 600-800 employers are killed when driving vehicles in the course of their work each year," said Mr Bibbings.

New chemicals, natural and manufactured, are emerging all the time with the potential to give rise to health issues.

Modern problems

Mr Bibbings said: "It wasn't until about seven years ago that we came across prawn peelers' asthma.

"With the growth in the prawn industry in Scotland, people were being exposed to funny proteins which were being generated when the prawns were blown out of their shells with compressed air."

Musculoskeletal problems have always existed, but I expect a lot less was made of them when employed conditions were hard Keith Palmer, editor of the journal Occupational and Environmental Health Firms failing workers over safety Women 'putting up with back pain'

Similarly, in 1973 it was discovered that a chemical used to make PVC products caused liver cancer.

As work-related fatalities and poisonings have gone down and working conditions and hours have improved, employees' thresholds of tolerance has changed.

Today, the biggest culprits of the 2.1 million cases of ill health every year caused or made worse by work are stress and musculoskeletal disorders, such as back pain.

Rather than being a new phenomenon, Keith Palmer, editor of the journal Occupational and Environmental Health, believes the trend is partly due to our higher health expectations and partly down to our willingness to talk about such issues.

"People nowadays will own up to and talk about health related problems but would not have mentioned them before because they carried a social stigma. These days it's not so stigmatising to talk about stress.

"Likewise, the musculoskeletal problems have always existed, but I expect a lot less was made of them when employed conditions were hard and when people had less disposable income."

He said the relatively new complaint of RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) was analogous to what was called writer's cramp among civil servants in the 1840s.

Modern working life is not without its stresses and strains

Similarly, people typing out Morse code around the time of the first world war complained of telegraphist's cramp.

A report this year by the TUC said the health of hundreds of thousands of workers was being damaged because they had to stand for too long.

It said the problem was just as widespread as in Victorian times, when doctors campaigned for shop workers to be provided with seats.

Dr Slovak agreed. "You will see a not dissimilar phenomenon at large DIY warehouses and large outlets now."

However, modern work solutions are also problematic.

There have been reports of legionella outbreaks from air-conditioning units, "sick building syndrome" and concerns about the health implications of using mobile phones and working on computers all day.

Mr Bibbings said he had received an enquiry recently from a man working for a supermarket delivery system.

The man said he closely escaped a couple of serious road accidents while working under pressure to deliver the groceries to the customers on time.

He also had a bad back which he blamed on the large amount of manual handling of loads that he did as part of his job.