About the registry
Physicians who specialise in occupational and environmental medicine or respiratory and sleep medicine (prescribed physicians) report occupational respiratory diseases to the registry through the physician portal.
Prescribed physicians:
- must report prescribed diseases – silicosis in all states and territories, plus several more for Queensland
- can report non-prescribed diseases, with patient consent.
Prescribed physicians will only report diagnoses caused or worsened by their patient’s work environment.
The registry launched on 22 May 2024 in response to a recommendation made by the National Dust Disease Taskforce.
Impact
Occupational respiratory diseases can be dangerous to the health and lives of people who work in high-risk industries like:
- building and construction – almost 1.4 million workers
- mining and quarrying – more than 300,000 workers.
These workers have the right to safe work environments. The registry will gather data needed to help prevent occupational respiratory diseases.
Working with state and territory governments, we will use data collected in the registry to:
- understand the nature, extent and impacts of occupational respiratory diseases
- identify at-risk industries, occupations, job tasks and workplaces
- identify related risk factors, incidents and trends
- prevent and reduce occupational respiratory diseases among workers
- improve the quality of life for people affected and their families
- develop policies and programs to protect workers
- support the delivery of tailored health services for occupational respiratory diseases.
Role of the CDC
Our role is to:
- manage and continuously improve the registry
- monitor mandatory and voluntary notifications
- publish statistics about the number and types of occupational respiratory diseases in the registry’s annual report
- share this information with state and territory health agencies and work health and safety agencies
- support research into
- the harms, trends and impacts of occupational respiratory diseases
- early disease identification
- preventing diseases
- hazard and risk control.
Related topics
Read more about: