HEALTH SURVEILLANCE

What is Health Surveillance?

Health surveillance is a system of ongoing health checks. These health checks may be required by law for employees who are exposed to noise or vibration, ionising radiation, solvents, fumes, dusts, biological agents and other substances hazardous to health, or work in compressed air.

Why is it important?

In short, medical surveillance is used to identify trends in health deterioration which might be as result of occupations or working environments exposed to health risks. It is also used to identify individual health issues. The information gathered, if used correctly, plays an important role in mitigating risk.

Benefits

• Detecting ill-health effects at an early stage, and ensure better controls to prevent them getting worse

• Providing data to help employers evaluate health risks

• Enables employees to raise concerns about how work affects their health

• Highlighting lapses in workplace control measures, therefore providing invaluable feedback to the risk assessment

• Providing an opportunity to reinforce training and education of employees (e.g. on the impact of health effects and the use of protective equipment).