Safety professionals, listen up! Here’s an opportunity to share your knowledge about occupational safety and health to the world. The International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN specialized agency, is compiling the fifth edition of its “Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety”. They are currently in need of thousands of safety professionals who can help them as authors, editors or peer reviewers for the compilation.

Hopefully, with your help and other volunteers around the world, the fifth edition will be provided free online and via CD-ROM.

“This notion of charging for the Encyclopaedia became very problematic very quickly: Poor or developing nations who need the information most are the least likely to be able to pay for it,” said Ilise L. Feitshans, JD, ScM. “From a practical standpoint, therefore, it is completely impractical to place an economic barrier between the information and the end-users. Any economic obstacle to obtaining the access to the wealth of information in the ILO Encyclopaedia is inappropriate because occupational health is a human right,”

Fourth Edition

The fourth edition of the Encyclopaedia was a product of a collaboration of thousands of safety professionals from more than 50 countries. They also come from various industries with representatives from labor and management, academia and industry, and private and public sectors.

The fourth edition consists of over 1,000 articles and illustrations, as well as thousands of citations of references. At the end of every chapter is a list of sources and relevant readings. Copies of the fourth edition (online, print and CD-ROM) are in English and French.

Priority Chapters

According to ILO, the following are the priority chapters in the fifth edition that need revisions:

1. OSH management systems
2. SARS
3. Emergency planning
4. Animal to human transmissibility of occupational diseases/Avian Flu
5. AIDS in the workplace
6. Integration with wellness and on-site employee health-prevention programs

a. Obesity prevention, reduced health care costs, and reduced downtime

b. Genetic understanding of occupational illness

c. Lifestyle issues from outside the workplace

d. Drug and alcohol dependency issues

e. Smoking and secondhand smoke (including employer liability and cessation programs)

f. Dependent family and relationships with children, ex-family, older parents, etc.

1. Nanotechnology
2. Psychosocial dimensions of occupational health programs
3. Driving and motor vehicle accidents

a. Increased understanding of economic costs

b. Liability issues

1. Multi-jurisdictional questions: transborder licensing commercial drivers, insurance, tort
2. Enhanced training programs

How to Volunteer

The launch of the fifth edition is set in December 2009. The plan is to make it available in English, Spanish and French. If you want to participate in this project, just follow these steps:

1. E-mail them your information (name, qualifications, contact details, etc.) and a short summary (500 words or less) of the topic you want to participate in. The address is ENCYCLOPAEDIA@ilo.org

Don’t forget to indicate in your e-mail whether you want to participate as an article author, a chapter editor, or a peer reviewer.