Are your employees exposed to areas with a noisy environment, dust, hazardous chemicals or using vibrating tools?
Health surveillance is about systematically watching out for early signs of work-related or ill-health in employees exposed to certain health risks in the workplace.
Employers are obliged to provide a safe working environment for their employees, eliminating or substituting risks where possible and although PPE is another line of defence, health surveillance is designed to help companies monitor the effectiveness of controls (including PPE) that are put in place.
Laws that are related to health surveillance are:
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999
- Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Regulations 2002
- The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005
- The Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005
- Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment Regulations) 1992
Health surveillance is important for:
- Identifying ill-health effects at an initial stage so employers can establish better controls to prevent them from 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 (e.g. on the impact of health effects and the use of protective equipment) Health surveillance can protect companies from expensive litigation, with evidence from regular health surveillance checks
Here at Connexus, we can help your business with your Health Surveillance needs, depending on the risk assessments in your different working environments.
- Hearing/ audiometry surveillance
- Spirometry/ lung function tests
- HAVS (hand-arm vibration syndrome) for Tiers 1, 2,3 and referring T4.
- Skin Assessments
- DSE or workstation assessments
