MEDICAL SURVEILLANCE AND EPIDEMIOLOGY OF ENMS

Medical surveillance

This is a fundamental tool to assess the effects on the health of workers potentially exposed to occupational hazards. In the case of ENMs, the limited set of available data on hazards, exposure concentrations, and risk management effectiveness increased the perceived need for a general medical monitoring program for nanomaterials workers. The same lack of information on the effects in other areas extends to medical studies of pathologies associated with NMDs; So far, no specific human disease has been definitively associated with exposure to ENMs, what can be achieved is a registry of workers potentially exposed to these ENMs as indicated by studies.

"Regarding the epidemiology in ENMs,"

 The factor time of exposure of workers to determine the effects was also not conclusive to associate diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis and cancer, since not enough time has passed to measure many occupational diseases and few epidemiological studies have been carried out.

"Factors that could improve the development of epidemiological studies"

These factors include: consistency in documentation of ENM characteristics, lack of information and uncertainty about other toxicants in the workplace, and an adequate range of exposure concentrations (i.e. not fully attenuated or made inconsistent by controls or PPE) (Laney et al. 2011; Schulte et al.)