WorkSafe recorded 70 work-related fatalities and 2,770 reported instances of illness, injury and serious harm in 2025. Workplace injury and illness is estimated to cost New Zealand around $5 billion annually.
The comparison is the part that should prompt reflection: New Zealand has twice as many workplace deaths per capita as Australia, and four times as many as the United Kingdom.
Those are comparable economies
Australia and the UK have similar industrial mixes, similar regulatory frameworks and similar technology. The gap is not explained by New Zealand having more dangerous industries.
It is explained by practice — how work is designed, supervised and resourced. Which means it is addressable rather than inevitable.
The statistic that changes priorities
A worker is roughly 15 times more likely to die from a work-related disease than from a workplace accident.
That inverts where most businesses direct their health and safety attention. Accidents are visible, immediate and attributable. Occupational disease appears years or decades after the exposure that caused it, by which time the person may have changed employers and nobody connects the two.
The major exposures:
- Asbestos — still the leading cause of work-related death in New Zealand, present in a large proportion of buildings constructed before 2000, with a latency of decades.
- Respirable crystalline silica from cutting, grinding and drilling concrete, stone and engineered stone. Causes silicosis, which is irreversible.
- Welding fume, classified as a carcinogen.
- Wood dust, associated with nasal cancer and respiratory disease.
- Solvents and isocyanates in coatings and adhesives.
- Diesel exhaust, a carcinogen relevant in workshops and warehouses.
- Noise, causing permanent and entirely preventable hearing loss.
The control failure is consistent
Across all of these, the recurring failure is reaching for personal protective equipment when higher controls were reasonably practicable.
The duty is to eliminate risk where reasonably practicable, and to minimise where it is not. That order is the law, not a preference.
- Eliminate — different material, different process, buy components pre-cut so cutting happens under controlled conditions elsewhere.
- Substitute — lower-silica materials, water-based coatings, quieter equipment.
- Engineering controls — on-tool extraction, water suppression, local exhaust ventilation, enclosure of noisy plant.
- Administrative — procedures, rotation, scheduling.
- PPE — last, and only effective if correctly selected, fitted and maintained.
On-tool extraction and water suppression for silica are well proven and comparatively cheap. A business relying on disposable masks for concrete cutting has chosen the weakest available control.
Fit testing is routinely missed
A tight-fitting respirator that does not seal provides substantially less protection than assumed. Fit testing confirms the specific model fits the specific person, and facial hair at the seal prevents an effective seal regardless of the equipment.
This is one of the most commonly missed requirements in New Zealand workplaces.
Where the acute deaths concentrate
For the fatalities that are accidents rather than disease, the causes recur:
- Vehicles, including driving for work — the largest single source across the economy.
- Falls from height, including from low heights.
- Machinery and moving plant.
- Being struck by objects.
- Electricity.
Agriculture and forestry carry among the highest fatality rates of any sectors.
What the officer duty requires
Directors hold a personal due diligence duty that cannot be delegated or insured, and health and safety fines cannot be insured against.
The element that does most work is verification — checking that what you were told is happening actually is. An officer who received assurances and accepted them has not verified anything, and that requires occasionally going and looking.
Getting the focus right
Keep a distinct critical risk list — the small number of things that could kill someone — managed with named controls and named owners. A register of two hundred entries where a paper cut sits alongside an unguarded machine obscures rather than helps.
And include occupational health on that list. It kills more people than the accidents do.
WorkSafe publishes exposure standards, sector guidance and its data centre free at worksafe.govt.nz, and ACC publishes work injury statistics.
Figures: WorkSafe New Zealand, 2025 fatality and serious harm data; comparative and cost estimates as reported. General information only, not legal advice.
