Kingdom of Thailand

The Labor Protection Act, B.E. 2541 has required, in Item 107, that employers perform annual/periodic check-up for their employees and send results to Labor Inspector Officers, as will be detailed of criteria and methods in Ministerial Regulations. But till now, there have been no such details in such Ministerial Regulations, resulting in on details and appropriate guidelines for annual/periodic check-up for employees in all 16 categories. Ministry of Industry has also issued an addendum list on Ministerial Notification, Number 3 (B.E. 2542) about workplace safety which require risk assessment process and reports for 12 categories of industries.

The authors believe that a list, either tentative or extensive, of replacement and periodic check-up should be obtained through research. Then, results will be presented to concerned bodies and workplaces for consideration to use them for employees’ health benefit. We first focused on only 5 categories of industries, which had large number of employees. So this research was limited to cold room industry, chemical industry, synthetic resin, elastomer, plastic, or non-glass synthetic fiber industry. Animal or vegetable oil extraction industry, only those using solvent extraction, and fertilizer or pesticide industry.

The research was done by literature review to obtain data on health hazards in 5 categories of industries, then exposure assessment survey 1 plant in each category to obtain further data on health hazards. Literature review to obtain appropriate drafted list of pre-placement and periodic health exams for the 5 categories, propose the drafted lists to experts and ask for their comments, make appropriate modifications to the lists, perform field trial of the modified lists with 5 plants in each category covering various sizes of plants and examine at least 30 employees in each plant, then evaluate and make into final lists, then submit to Workmen Compensation Fund for their consideration to put into effect.

We would like to suggest that making a list for check-up of each category was not that difficult. This may be done by occupational medicine physicians through literature review and walk-through survey, and expanded to other industries. This will help lead to the enactment of Ministerial Regulations under Item 107, The Labor Protection Act, B.E. 2541, and make full use of them by concerned bodies.