Biological Monitoring

The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations, 2002 (COSHH) stipulate that an employer is duty bound to assess the possible health risks to their employees from chemicals in the workplace. The employer is responsible for making sure that exposure to chemicals is either prevented, or effectively controlled. To do this the employer may need to measure the amount of chemical exposure. Biological monitoring is effective in indicating how much of a chemical has entered the body by whatever process by measuring the chemical that the employee is exposed to at work in a sample of breath, urine or blood. Which of these three samples is used depends on how the chemical that the employee is exposed to is processed by your body.