ILO technical guidelines on biological hazards

ILO expert meeting approved technical guidelines to prevent and control biological hazards.

From 20-24 June, an ILO expert meeting adopted tripartite guidelines on biological hazards for the first time on this type of risk. The guidelines provide specific advice, aligned with international labour standards, on preventing and controlling work-related injuries, diseases, and deaths related to exposure to biological hazards in the working environment. This includes questions related to the responsibilities and rights of competent authorities, employers, occupational health services and workers, workplace risk management, workers’ health surveillance, and preparedness and response to emergencies.

These guidelines were validated just after the 110th Session of the International Labour Conference 2022 that decided to include a safe and healthy working environmentin the ILO’s framework of fundamental principles and rights at work and declared the OSH Convention, 1981 (No. 155) and the Promotional Framework for OSH Convention, 2006 (No. 187) as fundamental Conventions within the meaning of the ILO Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, 1998, as amended in 2022. This fact has conditioned all the text and language of the guidelines.

A biological hazard, as set out in the guidelines, refers to any micro-organism, cell or other organic material that may be of plant, animal, or human origin, including any which have been genetically modified, and which can cause harm to human health. This definition was agreed upon during the meeting.

Throughout the expert meeting, the Employers focused on the technical aspects of the guidelines to develop them based on a preventive approach, which is practical, understandable in different workplaces and applicable for developed and developing countries.

From the outset, Employers made it clear the importance to differentiate between the following biological agents’ exposure situations:

• On the one hand, when exposure to a biological agent is caused by an outbreak, epidemic, or pandemic situation where the biological agent is spread over a wide area, the contagion is not necessarily caused by the work activities.
• On the other hand, work-related exposure to a biological agent occurs primarily through manipulation,  production, or simply originated in the workplace due to the nature of the work

Defining clearly the difference between both situations and how to proceed in each case was important to provide a better understanding of different obligations and a better selection of the measures to put into practice to protect workers’ health. This was achieved in Chapter VII on Preparedness and response to emergencies.

The Employers also welcomed the approach adopted on pandemics, viewing them as an emergency rather than treating them as daily or regular biological hazards. This was important to avoid any transfer of responsibility from the public health sector to the world of work for biological agents that are a societal challenge and, therefore, by definition, also occur in workplaces without being of a clear and distinguished occupational nature. This was also achieved by making the text clearer.

With a tenacious and tireless spokesperson, supported by valuable experts and ACT/EMP and IOE (find the list of participants in the “Resources” section), Employers were able to remove some repetitive, unclear, ambiguous or out-of-scope notions or situations out of the control of the employers. Some examples finally removed from the text were “the application of precautionary principle when there is no sound scientific criteria to establish requirements for the protection of workers against occupational exposure to biological hazards”. The Employers Group also managed to omit any reference to “the risks of biological hazards, transmission, infectious diseases and vector-borne diseases caused by temperature rise” or that “physical and psychosocial hazards arising from biological risks" can be included in the definition of biological hazards in the working environment. References to global supply chains were also removed.

The guidelines were finally adopted by consensus. The guidelines are not legally binding and will support efforts to protect all workers and employers against biological risks and assist employers in safeguarding business continuity. The approved guidelines will have to be formally adopted by the Governing Body during its next session in November.