Health Essentials June 2026
Are we poisoning our workers, or just polluting our data?
Early in 2026, our reporting tool Health Insights, seemed to reveal a new concern.
The tool is for all rail industry to report on the health of staff, so it gives us a good view of what is happening across the industry. When it reveals new concerns, we explore further.
What the data showed
We must not prejudge the data and dismiss a result just because it is not what we expect.
It’s good but maybe not surprising news that rail employees don’t get poisoned at work very often. However, in January 2026, poisonings suddenly quadrupled in the data reported to Health Insights. That’s a big and unexpected increase.
Taken at face value, this would suggest a dramatic and concerning problem that needed urgent attention.
Further investigation
RSSB health specialists and data quality assurance processes allowed prompt examination of the data. This found that stomach upsets had been recorded under ’poisoning’ rather than ‘gastrointestinal illness’. Once identified, the anomaly was quickly addressed, and no new concern in rail workplace health risks was found.
The importance of health data
RSSB have a quality approach to data use and analysis. Health data is generally less mature than safety data and it tends to be collected in multiple systems and by many different stakeholders. Our tool Health Insights is designed with these challenges in mind. It has clear definitions and is a single, simple way for industry to report health data. It also provides a clear picture of health performance.
Benefits of Health Insights
With increased uptake of Health Insights, we will gain a more representative picture of health and improve the quality of data. This will increase the reliability of health data and improve our confidence in it.
Key takeaways
- High-quality, consistent data reporting turns insight into actionable priorities.
- Health is a huge challenge for the future of rail, because our industry shows up to three times the national average for sickness absence.
- We’ve already made great progress with health data in rail. Thirty companies are now committed to reporting health across all sectors of rail.
In 2019, RSSB estimated that the rail industry spends £900m a year on workforce health-related costs, with lost time rates due to sickness notably higher than the UK average.
Health Insights provides the data and insights which have helped the industry direct action to support the most effective allocation of resource and continue to drive improved health outcomes.
Every year Health Insights attracts more users, which increases representation and confidence in the data. With more data we can make the railway more efficient, reliable, and resilient.
