A/HRC/42/41 fundamental aspect of the right to just and favourable conditions of work; 7 however, it also encompasses many other interrelated and interdependent human rights of workers. 21. Everyone, including workers in both formal and informal settings, has the inherent right to life, 8 the right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health9 and the right to the physical integrity10 of their body.11 Acute poisonings and other cases of extreme exposure to toxic substances are unquestionable violations of these rights of workers, subjecting them to violent, cruel, inhuman and degrading forms of treatment. However, these rights also extend to longer-term, chronic exposure to toxic substances, which can also give rise to violent, cruel, inhuman and degrading outcomes. 12 22. These human rights of workers depend upon preventing exposure. The harms of chronic exposure to toxics are often invisible, and it may be years or even decades until adverse health impacts become manifest in workers or their children. Prevention of exposure to toxic substances is essential to protect human rights, including the rights of workers, and the following principles reflect this reality. Principle 1 – Everyone must be protected from exposure to toxic substances at work. Commentary 23. Workers are especially vulnerable to the violation and abuse of their human rights, not the least of which is being subjected to exposure to toxic substances in the course of their work. “Workers” are not only directly employed workers but also informal workers, as well as contract workers, subcontractors, agency and other sorts of temporary workers and all other persons performing work or work-related activities. 24. Workers themselves have been “canaries in the coal mine”, typically exposed first and the most, revealing the deadly price of toxic chemical use. Yet this is not simply a problem of unknown risks. Workers continue to be exposed to known toxic substances, including industrial chemicals and hazardous pesticides, when demonstrably less dangerous alternatives exist, for a variety of reasons. 13 For example, laws and policies on occupational health are often not health-protective. They continue to permit workers to be exposed to toxic substances at levels that are hundreds, if not thousands of times higher than for nonworkers in the same jurisdiction.14 Risk assessments of exposure, when conducted, are often based on incomplete knowledge or false assumptions, 15 resulting in misleading assurances of safety and widespread impacts on workers’ health. Processes for improving standards of protection from exposure continue to be deliberately delayed for years, if not decades, resulting in countless premature deaths16 (see principle 6). 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 6 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, art. 23. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 6. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, art. 12. This right encompasses the right of each human being to autonomy and self-determination over their own body, including over the entry of unwanted, toxic substances into their body, whether from occupational or other sources. See Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 18 (2005) on the right to work, para. 7 (“These fundamental rights also include respect for the physical and mental integrity of the worker in the exercise of his/her employment.”). Every State has recognized one or more, if not all, of these human rights of workers through ratification of international human rights instruments. A/HRC/22/53 and A/HRC/33/41. A/HRC/39/48 and Corr.1, para. 40. Ted Smith and Chad Raphael, “Health and safety policies for electronics workers”, in The Routledge Companion to Labor and Media, Richard Maxwell, ed. (Routledge, 2015), pp. 78−89 (citing Amanda Hawes). For a detailed scientific presentation of these disparities see, e.g., Occupational Health Hazard Risk Assessment Project for California: Identification of Chemicals of Concern, Possible Risk Assessment Methods, and Examples of Health Protective Occupational Air Concentration, (Oakland, California, California Environmental Protection Agency, 2007). A/HRC/39/48 and Corr.1, para. 64. Ibid., para. 38.