New and emerging occupational risk and associations with small and medium enterprise (SMEs) in Malaysia: A review

Other than traditional occupational risks, new and emerging risk or known as ‘NER’ is initially explored by European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) in 2002. The fundamental of NER is provided by EU-OSHA with four export forecasts on emerging risk associated with physical, psychological, chemical and biological. The study of NER is considered as a new discipline that needs a better clarification on the definition of the idea itself. Meanwhile, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) contributed to the high rate of accident leading to high compensation and economic loss. This paper strives for reviewing the definitions of NER and association with SMEs. Journal articles were compiled from Scopus and Web of Science. The keywords used in the selection of the articles are reviews, definition, risk, occupational risk, new and emerging risk and SMEs. Based on the finding of the literature reviews of NER, issues of risk in Malaysia SMEs were explored and categorised accordingly.