Trends for risk factors in the Danish work environment

For the past five years, the Danish Working Environment Authority has monitored trends for selected occupational risk factors, applying data taken from the registry of occupational illnesses and symptoms. This report focuses on fatal and other serious accidents, heavy lifting and monotonous repetitive work, and psychosocial risk factors. These factors follow different patterns of development and are unevenly distributed by sector. Overall, ‘traditional’ physical exposure factors have decreased, whereas illnesses related to psychosocial factors have increased rapidly. Work-related psychosocial symptoms and illnesses are now the second most frequently reported group of occupational diseases in Denmark.