Jump to content
118. Psychosocial and biological hazards in the workplace
- Psychosocial hazards in the workplace
- Work-related stress is one of the most frequent health risks in workers in Europe
- Psychosocial risk factors of workers
- Excessive workload
- Long working hours
- Conflicting demands
- Lack of influence over their own work
- Poor management
- Psychological and sexual harassment
- Discrimination
- Prevention
- Primary
- Eliminating the risks themselves
- Secondary
- Regularly ask workers if they have any complaints
- Tertiary
- Training employees to better handle their work situation
- Providing employees with coping tools
- Prove opportunities for treatment and recovery
- Biological hazards in the workplace
- Two types
- Allergens or toxic agents which cause occupational diseases in respiratory tract and skin
- Microorganisms which causes zoonoses or other infectious disease
- In food industry, agriculture, working with animals, health care workers, working with wastes, laboratories, etc.
- Groups of biological hazards
- 1 – cannot cause human disease
- 2 – able to cause preventable or treatable human disease
- 3 – causes severe preventable or treatable human disease
- 4 – causes severe non-preventable and untreatable human disease
- Biosafety level (BSL)
- A set of precautions required to isolate dangerous biological agents in a lab
- Biosafety level 1
- Lowest level
- Lowest levels of precautions
- For non-pathogenic E. coli, staphylococci, etc.
- Biosafety level 2
- For hepatitis viruses, HIV, pathogenic E. coli, staphylococci, etc.
- Biosafety level 3
- For M. tuberculosis, SARS-Cov-2, Yersinia pestis, etc.
- Biosafety level 4
- Highest level
- Highest levels of precautions
- For Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Lassa virus, etc.
- Prevention
- Risk assessment and reduction
- Workers must be informed on risks and trained
- Regular health surveillance
- Workers with symptoms should stay home
- Vaccination
- Proper hygiene
- Personal protective equipment (PPE)
- Gloves
- Masks
- Face masks
- etc.