Occupational Safety and Health in Bulgaria

Part III: Monitoring of the workplace

The last section looked at identifying the problems present in different sectors and workplaces. It was in essence a subjective assessment of the situation. The next step in any occupational safety and health and environmental programme is to evaluate the problems. This part relies on measuring and monitoring to supplement the "feelings" and concerns of members on the shop floor. Monitoring is also important to make sure that controls to limit exposures are in place and working.

Figure 16. Workplaces where exposure levels were monitored

Enforcement of health and safety standards at the workplace was perhaps controlled by trade unions, but since transition unions have been presented with a more passive role concerning monitoring. This section aims to find out what the situation is now in relation to what type of monitoring is carried out, its extent, who carries out the monitoring, and if improvements are made as a result of the monitoring.

Monitoring of exposure levels took place in 79.7% of the workplaces surveyed, broken down as follows: monitoring of chemicals (in 49.7% of workplaces), dust (65.3%), noise (72.3%), vibration (59.7%), temperature (61.8%) and/or outside pollution caused by the workplace (37.4%). Noise, dust and temperature were the most common subject of monitoring, and outside pollution the least common (See figure 16).

Compared to all units in the Bulgarian sample, monitoring was more common in those units where the respondents reported having problems with the issue concerned. The difference was most obvious in the monitoring of chemicals (See figure 16). Monitoring of chemicals was naturally more common than average in the chemical industry workplaces, and within which monitoring was much more common in workplaces where chemicals were considered to be a health problem. In 92.3% of those chemical industry workplaces where chemicals were considered to be a serious health problem, monitoring of chemicals took place.

Figure 17. Workplaces of different size where exposure levels were monitored

In all cases, monitoring was more common in larger workplaces. (See figure 17)

Monitoring was carried out by a government inspector in 74.8% of the workplaces, by a company industrial hygienist in 59.5% of the workplaces and by a trade union inspector in 34% of the workplaces. In 31.8% of the workplaces, the monitoring was carried out also by someone else, not specified.

In 62.6% of the workplaces, the monitoring results were given to the union. In 50.2% of the workplaces, the respondents assessed that some improvements were made after monitoring. The percentage was much higher (65.6%) when the results of the monitoring were given to the union. This latter information confirms research from the USA and Europe that shows that improvements in health and safety conditions at the workplace are more effective when negotiated with trade unions. 62.1% of the respondents reported that they had received support or cooperation from the labour inspection services.


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