105 Workplace Air Standardisation Projects Related to Biological Agents at European Level : Recent History and Perspectives

As a significant portion of our time is spend in work places, the occupational exposure is of particular interest for maintaining human health. Within the Technical Committee CEN/TC 137 “Assessment of workplace exposure” the working group named WG5 “Biological Agents” is engaged in the standardization of strategies to assess workplace exposure to bioaerosols. The group already exists since the early 2000s in the European Committee of Standardization (CEN) and was reactivated in 2017 to continue on work items of prevailing interest. Between 2018 and 2021 three standards have been revised and newly published: EN 13098 (general guidelines for measurements), EN 14031 (measurement of airborne endotoxins) and EN 14583 (performance of sampling devices). As the COVID-19 pandemic confirmed, the work on bioaerosols is still important and many questions remain open. Recently, the work group drafted three new topics on which normative documents should be prepared in the future: “the measurement of airborne viruses”, “the measurement of airborne mycotoxins” and “the use of biomolecular methods for the measurement of airborne microorganisms”. As it is still a pressing topic, the work on the new preliminary work items has started with the preparation of a standard on virus measurement. The CEN/TC 137/WG5 has maintained its dynamic over the years and is also encouraging pre-normative researches and networking. The work of the group contributes to a unified approach at the European level on the issue of biological risks assessment and makes it possible to disseminate a better awareness of biological risks.