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Legal Considerations of Reproductive Hazards in Industry in the United Kingdom

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Pregnant Women at Work

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Abstract

The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HASAWA) imposes a duty on every employer to ‘ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees’. What is reasonably practicable and the relationship between (ultimately) profit and the employees’ health determine in large part the approach of the law to reproductive hazards at work.

‘The Health and Safety Commission must recognise that industry’s capacity to produce wealth, provide employment and compete effectively in overseas markets are priorities just as vital as the maintenance of good health and safety standards’ (Confederation of British Industry evidence to House of Commons Employment Committee)1

‘“Reasonably practicable” is a narrower term than “physically possible” and seems to me to imply that a computation must be made by the owner in which quantum of risk is placed on one scale, and the sacrifice involved in the measures necessary for averting the risk (whether in money, time or trouble) is placed in the other’ (Asquith, L. J., in Edwards v. National Coal Board)2

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References

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Authors
  1. Steven J. Lorber
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. St George’s Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, London, SW17 0RE, UK

    Geoffrey Chamberlain (Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology) (Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology)

Copyright information

© 1984 The Royal Society of Medicine

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Lorber, S.J. (1984). Legal Considerations of Reproductive Hazards in Industry in the United Kingdom. In: Chamberlain, G. (eds) Pregnant Women at Work. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86031-9_16

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