COSHH Risk Assessment Step 6: Carry out appropriate health surveillance

Health checks

You can carry out a health check of your employees to find any adverse health effects as soon as possible. It involves collecting data to help find and evaluate health hazards. The data will be anything relating to their health, such as lifestyle information, eating habits, etc. You can then check that the current control measures are good enough and working properly. You can also assess the immunity of those employees working with biological agents or other hazardous materials (as they may need vaccinations).

When to carry out a health check

You must carry out a health check of all employees exposed to hazardous substances if:

• It's reasonably likely that the working conditions could cause an identifiable disease or ill health; and
• You can find this out without putting the employee at high risk.

You must pay for all health checks.

How to carry out your health checks

Provide suitable facilities for the employees to be examined. A trained doctor or nurse, or possibly a trained supervisor, must carry out the health survey. The procedure must be for the purposes of controlling exposure only and be as non-invasive as possible. It may include taking samples, measurements and clinical examinations.

You must judge whether the disease is likely to occur. Look at the frequency, duration and type of exposure. Also, consider toxicological data and compare them with other similar situations and studies.

If there is a possibility that ill-health effects could develop over time, you may need to continue your health checks even after the employee is no longer exposed. You should only do so if you can detect the ill health early on.

Keep records for at least 40 years from the last entry.