The Regional Association of Oil, Gas and Biofuels Sector Companies in Latin America and the Caribbean (ARPEL) launched the Guidelines on Health Surveillance regarding Psychosocial Risk Factors developed by the Occupational Health Project Team that works within the Environment, Health and Safety Committee. The development of the document was led by the Health Team of Repsol and revised by occupational health professionals of Petrobras, Ancap, Ecopetrol, Recope, Equión, Ocensa, EP Petroecuador and Schlumberger.

The main objective of these guidelines is to establish criteria and recommendations for the early detection of potential damage to workers as a consequence of exposure to psychosocial risks. It describes the different psychosocial risk factors and their effects on health, analyzes the different methods of evaluation of psychosocial risk factors and presents recommendations to develop a medical protocol for monitoring such risks. This document provides a simple, useful tool for occupational health professionals who wish to implement strategies for monitoring these risk factors.

Always with the goal of improving the working conditions and health of workers in the industry, the Health Team of ARPEL has taken as a long term measure to work in building "healthy work environments", under the conceptual framework defined by the WHO. Within this framework, the psychosocial environment represents one of the four strategic lines of action along with physical work environment, health human resources, and business and community.

The psychosocial environment at work is becoming increasingly important and is a growing concern to the industry. In fact, some Latin American countries have already embarked on the development of legislation in order to minimize this type of risk.

The Guidelines on Health Surveillance regarding Psychosocial Risk Factors is available in Spanish and Portuguese and can be downloaded from ARPEL web site (https://arpel.org/library/publication/397/). The English version will be available soon.