Health surveillance

In some circumstances, exposure to agents and substances that can be found at work is known to cause identifiiable disease or medical conditions.  Sometimes the onset of these conditions can be detected at an early stage either by the individual themselves or by staff with specialist training and knowledge of these conditions.  Where the nature and extent of exposure of indiviuals at work is such that there is an obvious and forseeable risk of such conditions developing it is often beneficial to carry out health surveillance to detect the onset of such conditions at an early stage, allowing further exposure to be prevented or controlled.

Health surveillance may also be legally required in some circumstances. For example, both the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 and the Noise at Work Regulations 2006 require an employer to carry out health surveillance where the conditions in the workplace make it likely that the relavant disease will appear.

Further information on the circumstances when health surveillance is likely to be required and on the principles underlying it is given on this HSE webpage.

Within the University, health surveillance is managed by the Occupational Health Unit who should be consulted for further information on the programmes that they operate.