Prof. Martie van Tongeren

Prof. Martie van Tongeren
Professor of Occupational & Environmental Health the University of Manchester

Biography

Martie van Tongeren is Professor of Occupational & Environmental Health the University of Manchester. He has nearly 30 years of experience in research in occupational and environmental exposure assessment and epidemiology, including more than 10 years at the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) in Edinburgh most recently as Head of Exposure Assessment/Director of Research Development.  His main research projects include development and application of tools to estimate current and past exposure to various chemical and other agents in the work environment and the home for chemical risk assessment and epidemiological studies.

Keynote

Intervention Studies in Occupational Health: the missing link.

Interventions are very common in workplaces mainly to improve productivity and efficiencies, but also in order to comply with regulatory requirements (environmental and occupational) and to improve the health of workers.  Consequently, exposure to chemical agents, at least in Western Europe and the US, have declined in the last 4-5 decades.  However, there is a remarkable paucity of properly conducted intervention studies in occupational health, in particular in relation to chemical and biological agents and their health outcomes.   As a result, we don’t have a very good understanding of what interventions actually work to reduce exposure and to improve the health of workers.  Very wide estimates of the effectiveness of control measures have been noted from observational studies, probably because only few studies were probably conducted and many studies just compared the exposure between workplaces with and without the intervention.  However, there is an important role for properly conducted intervention studies to reduce exposure and improve occupational health, and results of properly designed intervention studies will lead to a better understanding of causality as well as better understanding of effective interventions.