Occupational safety and health promotes safe workplace conditions and seeks to prevent exposure of workers to adverse health risks. In the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) administers the Occupational Safety and Health Act which mandates safe workplace standards and limits exposures to harmful substances.

Since its inception in 1971, OSHA claims to have helped cut workplace fatalities by more than 60 percent and occupational injury and illness rates by 40 percent.

However, with widespread outsourcing of US manufacturing, employees producing goods for the US market are outside of OSHA’s jurisdiction. As such, the Chinese workers making the toys that received so much attention in the US for containing lead touch and inhale hazardous materials every day – including benzene, cadmium, lead, toluene, nickel, and mercury.

China's 2002 Occupational Disease and Prevention Control Act established limits on workplace poisons, but enforcement has been lax. In 2005, The Chinese Ministry of Health reported that almost 30% of China’s 700 million workers are routinely exposed to toxic chemicals. As a result, China has more deaths per capita from work-related illnesses each year than any other country. According to the International Labour Organization, in 2005 (the most recent year for which data is available), 386,645 Chinese workers died of occupational illnesses and millions more live with fatal diseases and as amputees caused by factory work.

The U.S. and many other countries require employers to periodically assess actual exposure to hazardous substances by workers and to demonstrate they have made a reasonable estimate of worker exposure through industrial hygiene air monitoring or equivalent methods. We are concerned that suppliers may not be routinely following these procedures in China where there are too few inspectors to monitor safety.

As You Sow is engaging companies in two areas of Occupational Safety – children’s toys and fluorescent bulb production. We are particularly concerned with worker exposure to known toxins such as lead and mercury throughout the fabrication process. Our goals are to:

• Minimize worker exposure to toxins in the manufacturing process
• Eliminate the most toxic substances from children’s toys
• Ensure that toy producers and licensors are implementing the health and safety provisions of their global supply chain codes of conduct