Biological hazards at workplace present the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) professional with complex challenges due to the large number and variety of potential biological agents and their effects. Many work activities include hazards to workers, and among these biological risk is particularly important, mostly because all workplaces harbor the potential for various forms of biohazard exposure, including the person-to-person transmission of infectious disease. While prevention and management of biohazards is often the responsibility of occupational or public health personnel, the generalist OHS professional should have an understanding of biohazards and their mechanisms of action, and the importance of vigilance and standard control measures. It is important to improve the current understanding of the health hazards caused by biological factors at the workplace.
Keywords: Biological hazards, hierarchy of control, health surveillance
1. Introduction
In recent years, infectious diseases due to biological hazards have been found to be most frequent among occupational diseases. Occupational biohazards are infectious agents or hazardous biological materials that exert harmful effects on workers’ health, either directly through infection or indirectly through damage to the working environment, and it can also include medical waste or samples of a microorganism, virus, or toxin from a biological source.
Biological hazards are organic substances that pose a threat to the health of humans and other
living organisms. Biological hazards include pathogenic micro-organisms, viruses, toxins (from
biological sources), spores, fungi and bio-active substances. Biological hazards can also be
considered to include biological vectors or transmitters of disease. Worldwide, it is estimated
that around 320 000 workers die each year from communicable diseases caused by work-related
exposures to biological hazards (Driscoll etal. 2005;OSHA2007).
2. Risk of biological hazards
The degree of risk associated with a biological agent or its ability to cause harm to humans is largely established by its classification as a risk group. This classification is made based on the following criteria:
- its ability to infect healthy humans,
- its possibility of being transmitted between humans or to the community,
- the severity of the disease it causes and the availability of drugs or prophylaxis to combat its negative effects.
Biological agents (infectious microorganisms) are classified into four groups according to the degree of risk to humans, animals, plants and the environment. The classification system is based on World Health Organisation guidelines and takes into account the pathogenicity of the agent; the mode and ease of transmission; host range of the agent; and the availability of effective preventive measures and treatment.
According to these criteria, a biological agent can be:
- Group 1 biological agent: one that is unlikely to cause an infectious disease in man.
- Group 2 biological agent: one that can cause a mild or moderate infectious disease in man and can pose a danger to workers, being unlikely to spread to the community and generally prophylaxis or effective treatment.
- Group 3 biological agent: one that can cause serious illness in man and presents a serious danger to workers, with the risk that it will spread to the community and there is generally effective prophylaxis or treatment.
- Group 4 biological agent: one that can cause serious or very serious illness in man and poses a serious danger to workers, with a high probability of spreading to the community and without generally having effective prophylaxis or treatment.
The biological hazards that workers get exposed in their workplaces were categorized into five broad groups reflecting the source of potential transmission of biological hazards:
· Human bodily matter including blood, tissues, vomit, urine, faeces, saliva and breast
milk etc., that may contain viral or bacterial diseases
· Living animals including cattle, sheep, poultry, fish and invertebrates, and their urine
and faeces
· Animal products including raw and cooked meat, offal, skins, blood, milk and eggs
· Laboratory cultures including animal and human tissue cultures, bacterial and cell
cultures, and
· Biohazard waste, sewerage and rubbish.
http://journalijcar.org/sites/default/files/issue-files/10855-A-2020.pdf
Research by Dr.Yashoda Tammineni,
MSc, Ph.D.
HSE,HOD at NIFS
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