The Human Rights to Water and Sanitation in the context of health and safety at work: completeness, incompleteness and outdated Brazilian labor legislation

Abstract

The Human Rights to Water and Sanitation (HRTWS) must be guaranteed in spheres of life beyond the home, including the workplace. In the workplace, little is discussed regarding the importance of analyzing labor standards from the perspective of these rights and their relationship with health at work. With the publication of the International Labor Organization (ILO) “WASH @ Work” report, guidelines were established for policies that would guarantee access to water and toilets during the workday. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze the Brazilian regulatory standards for health and safety at work, bringing a critical discussion with the normative content of the DHAS and the guidelines published by the ILO, to understand the advances and gaps present in Brazilian legislation through qualitative content analysis. It was identified that although the NR have a certain convergence with international guidelines, there is a need to advance mainly with regard to adaptation to intersectionalities that affect access to services (e.g., gender, age, disabilities) and with regard to informal workers (e.g., street vendors, recyclable collectors, app drivers, delivery drivers, among others) who are left unprotected from basic labor rights, affecting their health.