Occupational Monitoring

According to the Safety at Work Regulations (environmental monitoring and biological control of activities or substances dangerous or inherently hazardous to Health) - 2011, the employer has the obligation to carry out periodic monitoring of all materials which are of harmful nature throughout the activity of the Company.

This legal obligation to carry out environmental monitoring is often accompanied by many legal dilemmas which are mostly legitimate:

Are the Company's employees indeed using materials which are legally definable as harmful agents?

Are all harmful materials we use included in the list of materials specified in the regulations we are aware of or are there other lists applicable in our case (ACGIH) ?

What is the difference between the Time Weighted Average values as generally defined and the Action Level – (AV) in the activity of the company and how to calculate these values?

Is it really always clear to us what is the required frequency of environmental monitoring in order to be on the safe side?

What is the so-called "preliminary survey" and which laboratory can actually carry out responsibly such a survey?

What happens when, according to the regulations, occupational environmental tests must be performed, and sometimes also medical tests, but you believe that this is not necessary - either because previous tests showed that no levels of the tested substances were measured and the processes have not changed, or because of technological improvements or new protective measures that made the existing regulations irrelevant?

Is there a possibility to try and reduce the frequency of the occupational environmental tests significantly (the margin of the occupational environmental tests) and the accompanying medical tests?

Legal questions like these (and many others), are questions that concern many companies that perform environmental surveys in accordance with the employment law. Despite the legal complexity of the Company's situation in these areas, we know from our experience that managers and safety supervisors tend to make many of their decisions on these legal issues without prior consultation with legal experts. Yet it is highly desirable, and logically advisable, to examine all these questions in collaboration with experienced lawyers which deal for many years in the field of safety laws. The proper way to go is to carry out all this legal advice ahead of the execution of preliminary surveys and before receiving the results of the regulatory environmental monitoring, and thus to avoid getting into a situation in which the Company is already coerced to deal with the consequences and implications of actions and documents whose significance was not understood in advance.

And insofar as you expect to need also help and assistance in the interpretation and clarification of occupational safety hazards and the use of chemicals at your work site, you can also contact our lawyers on this issue.