Epidemiology of Occupational Health

Epidemiological methods have been widely used in the field of occupational health to describe the health status of specific working populations, to study their morbidity in relation to the type of occupation, to identify specific occupational hazards, to generate and test hypotheses on cause - effect relationships, and to evaluate interventions. When the relationship has proved to be rather strong and specific, such studies have been very successful in increasing our knowledge of the effects of occupational hazards. In many cases, however, epidemiological studies have led to controversial and confusing results. This may have been due to overestimating the power of epidemiological and statistical methods. Such limitations should not be seen as an obstacle to the use of epistemology, but rather as a justification to the use of sound and standardized methods. This manual tries to respond to the specific needs of occupational health epidemiology. The WHO Regional Office for Europe, after a decade of work in this field, has secured the collaboration of leading experts to present and discuss in a practical way different approaches and methods and their application to specific problems in occupational health. Rather than a comprehensive review of the subject, the book presents a series of articles. It is hoped that this book will encourage and facilitate sound and reasonable application of epistemology to the identification of hazards, assessment of risks and evaluation of control measures in the working environment, and thus contribute to the....