The range of the risks

The silicosis (caused by silica, which one frequently meets in the minors and sableurs for example); poisoning by lead (frequent in the factories of accumulators, painting, etc); the loss of auditive acuteness due to the noise (frequently meets on the airports and in many workshops where noisy machines such as presses or drilling machines are used).

There exists also a certain number of health issues which can be debilitating and which are associated with bad work conditions, for example:

* cardiac diseases;
* disorders of the musculature or the skeleton such as permanent dorsal lesions or lesions muscular;
* allergies;
* problems of reproduction;
* disorders related to the stress.

Many developing countries announce only one small proportion of the cases of workers affected by diseases related to work. The announced numbers are relatively low for several reasons:

* insufficiency or inexistence of the mechanisms of notification;
* insufficiency of the occupational medicine;
* lack medical personnel trained to recognize the diseases related to work.

For these various reasons inter alia, it is reasonable to think that actually the number of workers reached by occupational diseases is much higher than the announced number. In fact, the number of cases and the diversity of the occupational diseases are in increase and not in reduction as well in the developing countries as in the industrialized countries.