Typification of the most common accidents at work and occupational diseases in tunnelling in Portugal

Abstract

This chapter aims to fill a gap in scientific knowledge, through a statistical analysis of the most typical accidents at work and occupational diseases in tunnelling in Portugal, using Eurostat variables. It will compare the statistics in tunnelling with other types of works, considering the same indicators. First, it pre-sents an overview of statistical data of accidents at work and occupational diseases in the Portuguese con-struction sector, and then move on to the tunnelling statistical data. To obtain the data, the official Portuguese Statistical Authorities' databases were searched. With the information from 84 accidents at work (year 2013) and 42 cases of occupational diseases (2000-2015) in tunnelling, the paper compares the main indicators in construction to those of tunnelling, establishing the differences that set tunnelling apart from other construc-tion works.