A Systematized Overview of Published Reviews on Biological Hazards, Occupational Health, and Safety

The COVID-19 pandemic turned biological hazards in the working environment into a global concern. This systematized review of published reviews aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the specific jobs and categories of workers exposed to biological hazards with the related prevention.

We extracted reviews published in English and French in PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science. Two authors, working independently, subsequently screened the potentially relevant titles and abstracts recovered (step 1) and then examined relevant full texts (step 2). Disagreements were resolved by consensus. We built tables summarizing populations of exposed workers, types of hazards, types of outcomes (types of health issues, means of prevention), and routes of transmission.

Of 1426 studies initially identified, 79 studies by authors from every continent were selected, mostly published after 2010 (n = 63, 79.7%). About half of the reviews dealt with infectious hazards alone (n = 38, 48.1%). The industrial sectors identified involved healthcare alone (n = 16), laboratories (n = 10), agriculture (including the animal, vegetable, and grain sectors, n = 32), waste (n = 10), in addition of 11 studies without specific sectors. The results also highlighted a range of hazards (infectious and non-infectious agents, endotoxins, bioaerosols, organic dust, and emerging agents).

This systematized overview allowed to list the populations of workers exposed to biological hazards and underlined how prevention measures in the healthcare and laboratory sectors were usually well defined and controlled, although this was not the case in the agriculture and waste sectors. Further studies are necessary to quantify these risks and implement prevention measures that can be applied in every country.