The quiet hazards: How everyday riskcshapes daily life

Lloyd’s Register Foundation | June 2026

Dr Ruth Boumphrey, Chief Executive: “The Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll provides a crucial platform for people around the world to voice concerns about their safety, gathering data on everyday risks and harms every two years. By amplifying the voices of those who are often marginalised or underrepresented, the Poll offers invaluable global insights to guide interventions aimed at protecting those most at risk. Developed and conducted in partnership with Gallup and shaped through dialogue with international bodies, sector experts and frontline organisations, the Poll has been built collaboratively from the outset and is intended to be used the same way.

Now in its fourth edition, the Poll has spanned major periods of global and regional change and provides a unique insight into emerging trends in people’s perceptions and experiences of risk in turbulent times. With more than 143,000 interviews conducted across 140 countries and territories in 2025, this new edition allows trends first identified in earlier editions to be tested and refined.

The Poll is the starting point for a global insight-to-impact pathway: uncovering where harm is concentrated and where action could make the most difference. To date, Lloyd’s Register Foundation has invested £4.5 million in practical interventions to turn these insights into action.

This report focuses on the everyday risks that touch the most lives. Road traffic remains the most common top-of-mind risk to safety around the world, consistent with every previous edition of the Poll. Meanwhile, reported harm from food and drinking water has reached its highest level since the Poll began, suggesting risks many assumed were being successfully managed are quietly resurfacing. Workplace harm has continued its gradual decline, but the picture is uneven: in high-income service economies, worry about workplace harm is increasingly shaped by working hours and psychological strain rather than by physical hazard alone, indicating that occupational safety frameworks designed around physical risk may no longer capture what workers themselves count as harm.

People in countries with the most polluted air report comparatively low levels of worry about it, even as personal experience of harm rises with measured pollution levels. Where exposure does not translate into concern, the public pressure that drives protective action and policy change is weakened, and the cycle of harm is more likely to persist.

Many of the countries most affected by floods and storms are also those most affected by droughts and heatwaves, indicating that compound climate hazards are concentrating around the same vulnerable populations, and that risk management systems designed around single hazards may be poorly matched to the conditions people actually face.

We hope that this report, along with the underlying Poll data, empowers policymakers, businesses, civil society organisations and researchers to shape and target policies and interventions that address both people’s worry about, and experience of, risks to their safety. The unique breadth and depth of the Poll allowance the identification of at-risk communities, from global to local, providing a powerful tool to direct action and a strong foundation for the collaborations needed to support the safety of all.”

Download Report.