Who will watch out for the workers' health?

As of January 1, Israeli workers have no official way of finding out whether their workplace is a health hazard, following the closure of the National Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health.

The institute's 35 researchers and experts provided vital services, including air monitoring for materials hazardous to workers' health and blood and urine tests for workers who are exposed to dangerous substances. The institute shut down on January 1, when its staff stopped receiving salaries.

This week the heads of the association that operated the institute will have to decide, among other things, what to do with the massive data pool it accumulated on occupational diseases and work conditions in thousands of plants and workplaces.

"This is the largest institute looking out for workers' health in Israel," says Prof. Dan Michaeli, chairman of the Clalit health maintenance organization and head of the association that operated the institute. "It conducted studies that no one else did or will do. It's the central data reservoir on occupational diseases, and the only institute academically recognized to train occupational doctors."

Occupational safety and health experts warn that closing the institute will expose thousands of workers to risks that can cause diseases and disability in 10 or 20 years' time. "If there is no research, if occupational doctors are not trained, there will be nobody to watch out for the workers' health. Every day new substances emerge in workplaces and there will be no one to study and check how they affect workers," says Dr. Avi Griffel, a Technion researcher and adviser in safety management.

Despite the consensus among experts about the importance of these issues, the institute's activity has dwindled in recent years due to funding and management problems. Until 1997 it was funded by the health taxes paid by Histadrut and Clalit HMO members. According to a deal between the Histadrut, employers and the government, 1 percent of the tax was earmarked for occupational safety activity.

In its heyday, the institute operated on an annual budget of NIS 80 million and employed some 80 people. With the enactment of the National Health Insurance Law and cancelation of the HMO taxes, it was decided the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry would finance the institute's activity and other occupational medicine research. Today the research budget, allocated by the Industry, Trade and Employment Ministry, is some NIS 26 million a year. Recently, NIS 5 million was used to set up computers in the unit supervising safety in workplaces. Some NIS 6 million was earmarked for the institute's activity last year, but most of that was not used due to management problems.

The institute also raises some NIS 3.5 a year from the tests it conducts for workers. Dr. Asher Pardo, head of the institute's occupational hygiene department, says the staff used to conduct 30,000 monitoring studies - of air, noise, heat and cold - every year in hundreds of workplaces, including the largest ones in Israel. He believes his unit conducted some 70 percent of the monitoring studies required by law, thus protecting the health of tens of thousands of workers a year.

"We were the law's watchdogs. It's painful that they didn't realize how important this is," says Pardo.