The European Network of Safety and Health Professional Organisations (ENSHPO) launched its new European Certification Standard. EurOSHM (European Occupational Safety and Health Manager) is a voluntary European certification standard for occupational safety and health. It helps to verify the competence of OSH professionals and is particularly relevant for people with professional remits across several European countries.

In Finland, the National Occupational Safety Card has rapidly become a popular way to complete the basic training in safety and health at shared workplaces. The card was established in 1997. In 2007 the Centre for Occupational Safety started coordinating the Occupational Safety Card related activies. The card has been developed by Finnish industrial enterprises together with social partners, insurance institutions and educational organisations.

Every half an hour a young person dies of a fatal injury in Europe. This adds up to 20,000 young people losing their lives each year. Twice as many young people die of fatal injuries than all other causes of death combined such as cancer and diseases of the circulatory, respiratory and nervous systems. Yet according to the European AdRisk project, much can be done to prevent injuries among 15-24 year olds by understanding and addressing their risk-taking behaviour.
The EC financed AdRisk project, ‘Community Action on Adolescents and Risk- Taking’, now launched a package of materials and information targeted at policy- makers, stakeholders and professionals at both the European and national levels to help save the lives of Europe’s young people.

Our Newsletter No. 6 is now available. Please click the portlet on the right side to either download it (in English, German, French, Danish, Polish, Dutch, Italian, Turkish, Czech, Finish or Lithuanian) or subscribe to our mailing- list.

We are proud to announce that the Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency (KOSHA) has joined the ENETOSH network as an associated member.
The Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency (KOSHA) is a public and non-profit industrial accident prevention organization established on December 9, 1987 as a government-funded institute in accordance with the Korea Industrial Safety and Health Agency Act (Law No. 3931). KOSHA seeks to contribute to the growth and development of the national economy by maintaining and improving the safety and health conditions of workplaces and runs, among others, practical training programs for safety and health management, a correspondence training program for supervisors at workplaces, general training programs for supervisors at workplaces and an Occupational Safety Training Institute.
You will find more information on the KOSHA Member's page on this platform and on the KOSHA website.

The European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW) is the European Industry Federation for the construction industry, the building materials industry, the wood and furniture industry and the forestry industry. The EFBWW has 68 affiliated unions in 27 countries and represents a total of 2,350,000 members. The EFBWW is a member organisation of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and has its headquarter in Brussels, the capital of Europe.

The institute is part of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. It provides the following services: Ambulant diagnosis for clarification of suspected occupational or environmental diseases, environmental monitoring, counselling of colleagues related to questions in the fields of occupational, environmental or social medicine, preventional examinations according to various German regulations, pre-employment examinations etc.
In cooperation with the Initiative for New Quality at Work (INQA), the project "Full Breath" (Volle Puste) has been initiated. The project is supposed to raise awareness of the role of respiratory and skin diseases when choosing a profession.

Paedimed, coordinated by the University of Heidelberg, is a health promotion project based on a resource oriented salutogenic health concept. By specific measures, individuals shall be enabled to increase their control over their own health status and to improve their health actively. This concept focuses on the resources of individuals and not on risk factors. The aim of paedimed is to develop, implement and evaluate a web-based learning environment for schools. This will focus on the subjects of skin, skin diseases and sexuality, sexually transmittable diseases. Participating countries in the paedimed project are Germany, Italy and Romania.

Reducing the number of work accidents of young workers and job-starters is the aim of a new, common project of four sections of the International Social Security Association (ISSA). The project is looking for new pathways to integrate Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) into initial vocational education systematically. The focus will be on vocational schools, external plant centres and small and medium sized enterprises (SME).

This conference with 64 participants from 17 countries, organized by the Institute Work and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance, took place from the 3rd till the 5th of July 2008 at the BGAG, Dresden. This year´s topic was "Intercultural Dialogue in Work and Health". The event was carried out in co-operation with the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work and the Ethno-medical centre Hanover. Here you can find our report, some pictures from the event and the presentations of the participants.

The World Congress on Safety and Health at Work, which is being organised by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Social Security Association (ISSA) and the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (KOSHA) is the world's largest international event in occupational safety and health.

The 8th International Congress on Occupational Safety and Health at Work will take place on 3rd and 4th of July 2008 in Oporto Congress Center - Edifício da Alfândega, Porto. This year the Congress has a leading subject, the risk assessment and the subject “Healthy and safer workplaces, good for you, good for enterprises”.

“Move Europe” is an initiative of the European Network for Workplace Health Promotion (ENWHP) – a campaign for the "improvement of lifestyle-related workplace health". In the scope of this project, the ENWHP network aims to persuade European companies and other organisations to invest in programmes to help improve life-style oriented behaviour in Europe. The main focus of the campaign is on four specific topics: smoking prevention, nutrition, physical exercise and mental health. The campaign is planned to run for 3 years and will end in 2009.
Promoting workplace health, and especially the topics covered by the "Move Europe" campaign directly in companies all over Europe, can help bringing these topics to education and training inside these companies as well. There are trainers and teachers related to or working in these companies who can use the campaign to strengthen the role of workplace health. The improvement of life-style oriented behaviours at the workplace has, of course, always been a topic for training and education in occupational health and safety as well.
More information about the initiative here.

New members within the ENETOSH network! Professor Alredo Soeiro from the University of Porto started to establish a Portugese network of individual members of the ENETOSH network.
In Portugal, there is a large community of teachers and trainers involved in Occupational Safety and Health. Prof. Soeiro is a teacher of Civil Engineering at the University of Porto and has been researching safety in Construction. One of the members of the Protugese network, Dr. Roxo, was Vice-General Inspector of Labour in Portugal and is currently dealing with subjects related with the European matters of OSH. Dr. Freitas, another member, is responsible for OSH in the Portguese telecommunication company and president of APSET - Portugese Association of OSH. The three persons which currently form the Portugese network are a small sample that illustrates the spectrum of OSH activities in this country.

The Institute Work and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance will be organizing the 8th Training & Innovation from the 3rd till the 5th of July 2008. This year´s topic is Intercultural Dialogue in Work and Health. Again the event will be carried out in co-operation with the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work. Conference languages will be English and German. Speeches, workshops and conclusions that will be carried out in the conference hall, will be translated simultaneously.
The English version of the programme can be viewed and downloaded here. Please click here for the German version.
The registration form in English is available here, the German version here. All documents come in PDF file format and will be opened in a new browser window.
For more information on the 8th Training & Innovation, please click here.

This publication seeks to review in depth what risks young workers are exposed to at work and what the consequences of these exposures are, in both the short term and the long term for young workers. The full publication can be dowloaded as PDF file on the web site of the Agency or be ordered as a printed copy.

Today is the 13th International Noise Awareness Day. This day is supposed to put a worldwide focus on a very important topic in Occupational Safety and Health. Not only in daily life - loud music or traffic noise -, but especially at work, noise and the awareness of noise-related dangers are of high importance. This is where education and training can help reducing health risks caused by noise at work. This subject has always been one of the main focuses of ENETOSH.

Our fifth "Hot Topic" is "Healthy Children". Children are our future - and their health and their awareness of healthy behaviour and of health-related dangers are very important! A couple of projects, campaigns and courses all over Europe deal with this topic, so please have a look at our selection of good practice examples!

The Institute Work and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance will be organizing the 8th Training & Innovation from the 3rd till the 5th of July 2008.
This year´s topic is "Intercultural Dialogue in Work and Health". Again, the event will be carried out in cooperation with the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work. It is also a contribution to the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.

The "epitome"- project (eLearning Promoting the Integration of Migrant Workers) is a two year Leonardo da Vinci pilot project in operation from October 2006 to September 2008 involving six Member States – The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Latvia, Poland and the UK. This project addresses issues around the training of lower skilled actual and potential migrant workers in the hospitality and food and drink manufacturing sectors to ensure all employees are fully integrated into the workplace especially in terms of work and cultural practices. The project now enters the pilot phase, which means the project outcome (e-learning content) is ready to be tested. The national partners therefore are looking for enterprises to join this process.
Companies which are interested in joining the project are requested to contact Dr. Noemí Fernández Sánchez, RKW Kompetenzzentrum, Germany, email: sanchez@rkw.de.

In our second interview with OSH experts, we had the possibility to ask some questions to Kristiina Volmari, who is development manager at HAMK University of Applied Sciences, Vocational Teacher Education Unit in Finland. Mrs. Volmari presented Cedefop and the project Defining VET professions in the scope of the 7th Training & Innovation in July 2007 at Dresden. She told us her opinion about a common framework for teachers and trainers.

From 28th to 29th February, 2008, an international conference will take place at the Czech Union of Scientific and Technical Society, Prague. This conference is aimed at OSH specialists and managers of all levels, employees' representatives for OSH problems and any other interested parties who are aware that OSH education and training is one of very important components of the OSH prevention in companies and state administration. The participating experts will discuss aspects of OSH Education and Training in the changing world of work.

The partners of the ENETOSH project, funded by the EU-programme LEONARDO DA VINCI, developed jointly the ENETOSH standard of competence for instructors and trainers in safety and health. The development was carried out on the basis of the European Qualification Framework (EQF).