| No. | Principle | Meaning |
| 1 | Avoiding risk | Eliminating the hazard or exposure to it |
| 2 | Evaluating unavoidable risks | Appreciating their nature and importance in order to determine actions that ensure worker health and safety |
| 3 | Tackling risks at the source | Integrating prevention as early as possible, in the design of the workplace, equipment and tasks |
| 4 | Adapting work to people | Designing workstations and choosing equipment and methods that minimize the monotony, drudgery and cadence of tasks |
| 5 | Allowing techniques to evolve | Watching for opportunities to install preventive means in phase with technical and organizational evolution |
| 6 | Replacing hazardous means with safer ones | Eliminating dangerous products or processes when the same result is obtainable using less hazardous means |
| 7 | Planning prevention | Integrating work technique, structure and conditions, social relations and the environment into a coherent unit |
| 8 | Implementing measures of collective protection | Giving priority to collective protection means, using personal protective devices only to enhance collective protection (not to compensate for inadequate collective means) |
| 9 | Giving appropriate instructions to workers | Giving employees the information necessary to perform their tasks under conditions of optimal safety |