Criminalization and Occupational Health and Safety

Abstract

Work can be a dangerous place and provides the context for a multitude of deaths, injuries, and illnesses. These include those arising from major disasters, such as the chemical plant explosion at Bhopal, India, in 1984 or at Piper Alpha in the North Sea in 1988 and more recently in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. There are the fatalities reported in local newspapers: deaths from a fall at a building site, a tractor rollover, the death of a truck driver on the road, and death from asphyxiation due to a trench collapse. Fatal and chronic illnesses are also important outcomes of work: heart attacks, cancers, lung disease, and the multitude of chronic ailments that arise from exposure to chemicals ..