Dear All,

Looking for some advice on this topic as we are currently reviewing our procedure relating to chiller / freezer workers within our warehouses. We currently have a pre-employment chiller / freezer worker health questionnaire but are reviewing if we actually need this (plus the data protection implications and the fact supervisors and managers are not medically trained needs to be taken into consideration).

The requirement for pre-employment health assessments is mentioned in HSG76 but only as a reccomendation. We do not have access to BS EN ISO 12894:2001, does this paint a clearer picture? If we do not offer a pre-employment health questionnaire / assessment is there any other policy we would need to implement to fully comply with legal requirements?

Having searched extensively I am unable to find examples of current health assessments and/or the questions that should be asked. We need to be able to justify why we are asking what we are asking (e.g. medical history etc) but I just can't seem to find any guidance as to what should be asked and why! Would a more simple option be to request a letter from the employees GP stating they are fit to work in a chilled environment? (however I very much doubt GPs would do such thing or if we are able to request this of our employees)

Any help / guidance would be appreciated.

Regards

Jake

Thanks for the reply, but the link is unfortunately no clearer than what we've already established (this is the problem!). The health assessment is for full time chiller / freezer workers. We make provision for suitable PPE / break times / warm up rooms etc.

It is clear that as a company we need to know if our employees have any specific conditions that may increase their risk of ill health / injury as a result of working in cold conditions, however there is no detail about:
- the extent of the information required to be gathered (any examples of what to and not to include?)
- the data protection implications of collecting and storing (potentially sensative) data
- the competency of the person gathering the data (does a medically qualififed person have to complete pre-employment assessments, and who should bear the cost of this?)
- what procedure should happen if someone does have a certain illness that places them at a higher risk

It would help if there were explicit guidance on what companies need to ask (i.e. the following criteria must be confirmed before persons can working in cold environments) however I don't think such a list exists!

Thanks Bob, we do have access to occupation nurses, however we are looking to create the questionnaire to identify who needs to visit one! (if we did a blanket policy 100s of employees would need to be seen, rather than (I would expect) a very small percentage that are 'at risk')

Does anyone have an example health questionnaire available? (and / or a source of information as to what to ask?).

Cheers

Jake,

The simplest thing to do is as you first proposed; Write to the person's GP, with their consent, requesting information as whether there is any reason x should not work in a cold environment or whether any adjustments need to be made for the person to work in a cold environment.

Conditions that would require consideration would include cardio-vascular diseases and diseases that affect the peripheral circulation such as diabetes.

Regards

Sorry this is a bit late...

see page 203 for the physical form the medical provider would use for a job related cold stress exam. This exam is for the US Navy, however it is not set up for the typical healthy young worker, it included civilian workers at logistics points so is likely very comprehensive. page 204 has the references

http://www-nehc.med.navy...edicalMatrix_7_2007c.pdf