Artikel 16

Employers shall, consistent with national law and practice and applicable collective agreements, adopt preventive and protective measures as a result of an assessment of biological risks in the working environment so far as is reasonably practicable, ensuring, as appropriate, consideration of different levels of exposure and risk, including those faced by women and men. In particular, they shall:
a) establish, in consultation with workers and their representatives, adequate and appropriate systems to conduct, review and, where necessary, update assessments of the risks to the safety and health of workers arising from biological hazards, taking due account of workers who may require special protection;
b) take all reasonable and practicable measures to eliminate the biological hazards in the working environment, or when not possible, control and minimize the risks due to those hazards, taking due account of the hierarchy of controls;
c) implement effective preventive and protective measures, taking into account the characteristics of the biological hazards and, if available, the evaluation of biological risks by the competent authorities;
d) provide, maintain and replace, as necessary, at no cost to the workers, adequate personal protective equipment according to the hierarchy of controls, together with training for its use;
e) conduct regular surveillance of the working environment and of workers’ health that is adequate and appropriate to the occupational risks to ensure the early detection of biological hazards and their potential impacts;
f) supervise work processes and regularly review the effectiveness of preventive, protective and control measures, including the availability of appropriate personal protective equipment;
g) take precautionary measures where the available information is insufficient to adequately assess the risks;
h) provide information, instructions and training on biological hazards in the working environment and on applicable preventive and protective measures to managers, supervisors and workers on paid work time and, where possible, during usual working hours, as well as workers’ representatives, at suitable and regular intervals;
i) ensure that all workers are suitably informed, in an accessible form and understandable language, of the risks due to exposure to biological hazards and of the applicable preventive and protective measures before they start any tasks involving such risks, when there are changes to working methods, to materials or to the risk assessment based on new information and, as necessary, at regular intervals;
j) investigate occupational accidents, occupational diseases and, as appropriate, dangerous occurrences related to exposure to biological hazards in the working environment in order to identify their causes and take the necessary measures to prevent recurrence of similar events, in cooperation with occupational safety and health committees or workers’ representatives, while retaining data related to incidents involving biological hazards.