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There are an estimated 1.1 million work-related deaths each year, many of them in the developing World and many of which could be prevented by better safety measures, the international labour organisation said today. Nearly 300,000 of these deaths are due to exposure to hazardous substances which lead to cancer, heart and respiratory disease, the UN Labour Organisation said. Asbestos alone kills 100,000 people per year, it said. The ILO said workers suffer an estimated 250 million accidents each year. Working children are caught in 12 million occupational accidents, of which 12,000 are fatal. Many of the accidents occur in developing countries that haven't adopted necessary safety measures. Construction sites in developing countries are ten times more dangerous than in industrialised countries, the organisation said. The ILO said an estimated 600,000 lives each year could be saved if safety and information practices were improved. The work-related toll is higher than the average annual one million deaths due to road accidents, it said. The data was released by Jukka Takala, Chief of the ILO's health and safety programme, at the start of a conference on occupational health in Sao Paulo, Brazil.