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The ILO's Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety has a long and honourable history. It is one of the flagship publications of the Office and is widely respected worldwide by health and safety professionals, students and policy-makers alike.
 Its first edition, already bilingual and in two volumes, was published between 1930 and 1934 under the editorship of Dr Luigi Carozzi. Its title was: Occupation and Health: Encyclopaedia of Hygiene, Pathology and Social Welfare.
It is interesting to investigate the origins of this groundbreaking work: why was it published in the first place? It turns out that the International Labour Conference held in 1919 in Washington DC requested the ILO to "to draw up a list of the principal processes to be considered as unhealthy". After widespread consultations with experts in various countries and within the Office, it was decided that drawing up a reliable list of this kind was not really possible, and that a separate publication was needed to survey all the hazards present in the working environment.
 This first edition already established the principles upon which later editions of the Encyclopaedia were also based. The most important of these is a very wide scope: as is claimed in its introduction, it would analyse all the complex matters that we place today under the umbrella of occupational safety and health "from the triple point of view of the work to be done, the worker employed, and the environment in which he worked".
 Already at that time it was realized that no such publication could ever be final, since science, technology and society are all living, constantly changing entities. It was also realized that while technological change introduces new hazards for life and limb, it also creates ways in which known risks can be diminished and even eliminated. Keeping track of all these changes and their effects would be a major task for any definitive work in the field, such as an encyclopaedia created by the ILO.
Another important observation made in the Introduction of the first edition was that the "strict purpose of [the Encyclopaedia] is to make science the servant of practical action. [It] is not a work of pure propaganda; it never sacrifices objectivity to the ideas which the authors naturally have at heart." Keeping the Encyclopaedia practical and useful for everyday purposes has been one of the principal aims of its successive editions.
 | The first edition of the Encyclopaedia was a great success, and reprints and supplements were steadily issued in response to demand. Naturally, a new edition would have required considerable resources, and these were not easy to find during the Second World War and in the post-war period. But eventually the Office engaged in the great project of creating a 2nd edition, and this was published in 1971 under the editorship of Dr Luigi Parmeggiani in 1971. The title of this publication, which has been kept for subsequent editions, is Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety.
With the accelerated rate of technological and social change that has characterized the post-war period, it became necessary to issue new editions more frequently, and the 3rd edition of the Encyclopaedia, again under the editorship of Dr Parmeggiani, was issued in 1983.
The period following the 3rd edition was marked by extremely rapid changes in the way information was handled and disseminated. First came the PC revolution, quickly followed by the World Wide Web. It was clearly necessary to work on a completely new edition of the Encyclopaedia, and this was achieved under the editorship of Prof. Jeanne Stellman of Columbia University in New York. Times have changed, and not only is this monumental work available in print format (in 4 volumes), but also in electronic format on the CD-ROM and the Internet version of the SafeWork Bookshelf. Like the book edition, the first CD-ROM edition was sold commercially, but later CD-ROM versions were made available free of charge.
 The 3rd and 4th editions were remarkable for another reason: they were translated into major world languages other than the official languages of the ILO. The 4th edition in particular was this way made available to large numbers of readers who may otherwise not have had access to the important information contained in this manual: in addition to being available in English, French and Spanish, it was also translated in its entirety into Chinese, Japanese and Russian, and partially into Korean and Portuguese.
Thanks to the efforts of the ILO Library, the 1st edition of the Encyclopaedia has also been scanned and the results posted, in pdf format, on the ILO's web site:
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