Prevention of accidents and occupational diseases plays a major role in the viability of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. However, occupational health and safety conditions in this setting are often precarious compared to large corporations, in which occupational diseases occur eight times less frequently. In a previous study [1], it has been identified, by reviewing the literature, the measures practiced by managers of businesses in this category in the province of Quebec in their efforts to decrease the incidence of occupational diseases. The initial research work reduced these measures to a catalog of elements of management. In the present article, the findings on the application of these elements will be presented, based on a survey of about 400 manufacturing businesses, of which 252 agreed to answer the questionnaire. The present article provides a descriptive statistic from the analysis of the responses. This work allowed to portray the strengths and deficiencies of occupational disease risk management practices in Quebec based on complete and valid responses from 32 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Overall, this portrayal reflects a serious effort to take up the cause of occupational health and safety in this type of business. It nevertheless reveals room for improvement of the implementation of health and safety risk management systems, and prevention of musculoskeletal diseases and hearing loss, which were found to occur in respectively 63% and 25% of these companies. This work therefore recommends that these diseases be treated as a priority by researchers and expert practitioners of occupational health and safety.

Unlike workplace accidents, occupational diseases are often underestimated and underreported since their effects appear gradually over time. They are even on the increase in the province of Quebec (Canada), especially in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where they are less likely to receive medical attention. The aim of this four-stage study is therefore to describe how prevention of occupational disease is practiced in this type of business and identify a way forward to improve the protection of worker health and well-being in Quebec. The present article focuses on the first two stages, namely reviewing the literature to catalog the elements of prevention and identifying the most relevant elements. Stages 3 and 4, in which gathered field data on the application of these elements and analyzed their relative effectiveness using descriptive statistics, are reported in Part 2 [1]. Despite the limitations of this research method, we portray in detail the elements that appear to have the most influence on occupational disease prevention in small to medium-sized manufacturing enterprises, and thus identify the strengths and weaknesses of occupational health and safety performance in this setting.