'200m in danger of workplace disease'

Senior union official issues alert over threat to workers' health

BEIJING - Occupational disease has overtaken workplace accidents as the biggest danger to Chinese workers with 200 million potentially under threat, a senior trade union official warned.

Tang Chun, an occupational disease expert with the labor protection department under the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, estimated that around 200 million workers in some 16 million enterprises work in hazardous environments.