90.000 occupational disease cases will be avoided in Europe, saving 3.5 billion euros over 10 years for the EU-25. These are the mind-boggling figures to come out of a recent ETUC report, now available in softcover. The study on how REACH will benefit workers' health was done by researchers from the University of Sheffield, looking chiefly at respiratory and skin diseases.

"The study bears out that chemical-related occupational diseases are a very big problem in all EU countries", said ETUI-REHS Director Marc Sapir.

Adopting an ambitious REACH should help bring down the numbers of these diseases that have been steadily rising for half a century. Everyone will win out - social security systems, through reduced costs; workers, through a better quality of life; and not least employers, who will avoid productivity losses from sickness-related absences.