Category: 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, dust, biological agents and other substances hazardous to health, or work in compressed air.

Health surveillance is important for:

• 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
• enabling 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 (eg on the impact of health effects and the use of protective equipment)

Your risk assessment should be used to identify any need for health surveillance. Health surveillance should not be used as a substitute for undertaking a risk assessment or using effective controls.

It is needed to:

• protect workers who are at an increased risk
• identify work-related ill health at an early stage so that steps can be taken to treat the condition and prevent further damage
• give early warning that protective control measures are no longer effective