Chapter 7 - Medical Surveillance

Abstract

This chapter focuses on medical surveillance of personnel that became an intrinsic activity in any modern workplace. Various interrelated factors are responsible, including extensive public awareness of health and safety risks, which is engendered by the explosion of telecommunication technology, increased exposure of corporations, corporate executives, and stockholders to potential liability with respect to the exposure of employees and the general public to the workplace chemicals, continually expansive regulatory requirements regarding employee health at all levels of government, rapid development of a global economy in which the protection of human health is rapidly becoming a basic precept of highly competitive marketing ploys, trade union concerns for the health and well-being of members, and corporate insurance underwriters. While the nature and extent of medical surveillance in the workplace are variable with legal jurisdiction and type of industry, the broad dimensions of contemporary workplace medical surveillance are clearly established and pertain directly to any medical surveillance program established for emergency responders.