Several professional activities include occupational exposure to biological agents. Biological agents shall be classified into four risk groups, according to their level of pathogenicity, virulence, transmission, existence of effective prophylactic measures and the availability of effective treatment. Biological risk assessment is usually neglected by the occupational health professionals, due to the lack of systematized information about the biological agents involved in many work activities.
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This work mainly attempts to review the literature on
biological agents related to occupational activities. A literature survey was
conducted for publications on this subject and the biological agents mentioned
in each paper regarding each activity were classified according to the
biological agents appearing in the European Directive 2000/54/EC list.
Publication bias and a large amount of confounding
factors, which have to be controlled, make this study difficult. The state of
knowledge about the biological risks is still relatively immature and the lack
of harmonization of methodologies in order to research and count biological
agents was notorious.
It was also difficult to classify numerous biological
agents present in the literature survey since they were not categorized. This
brings an additional problem to the occupational health professionals in
addition to the nonexistence of limit values for biological agents.
In conclusion, there is a need to develop a uniform and concise guidance on sampling and analysis of biological agents. The list of classifications of the biological agents should be reevaluated and the information on the dose-effect would also help to establish occupational exposure limits at least for some more usual microorganisms.
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