Health monitoring and intervention plan on oil industry workers: results from a case-study

Oil industry workers are particularly vulnerable to risks related to their especial working conditions like exposure to hazardous chemicals, explosions and fires, working in confined spaces and often in remote areas or in offshore platforms. Dedicated work health surveillance plans that take into consideration environmental risks are of the utmost importance to safeguard workers health and to communicate identified faults and gaps to other institutional departments to provide adequate intervention. This work presents an assessment case-study of an on-going health intervention and monitoring plan focused on oil industry workers and the quality of potable water distributed. In the assessment of risks to health, the quality of water for human use is case-sensitive as water is vital to life but may act as a transmission vector for several diseases whose symptoms may appear as acute (often as a consequence of water contamination by microorganisms or toxic substances) or chronic, usually more related to the ingestion of chemically contaminated water. In the study timeline, six parameters were identified as critical in the water quality: Total Coliforms, Escherichia coli, iron, pH, turbidity and colour. A global graphical distribution of nonconformity analysis by working service for each geographic location and for the entire period of the study highlighted the two worse water quality work sectors: ‘Oil Extractions Stations’ and ‘Baths & Changing Rooms’. Corrective measures arising from this case-study of the on-going health monitoring and intervention plan focus on sensibilization for improvement of workers hygiene and for cleaning and sanitization procedures.