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Monitoring health hazards in public premises

Environmental Services is the health protection authority in Helsinki that carries out monitoring to ensure that public premises or other, similar public facilities do not cause any health hazards. The previously mentioned public premises and facilities include day-care centres, schools, educational institutes, accommodation premises, sports facilities, swimming halls, public saunas and spas.

Inspections related to potential health hazards are performed through planned and regular monitoring, as well as at the request of the users and customers.

If a health hazard is suspected, the operator should be contacted first (such as the school principal, day-care centre’s director, hotel owner, sports centre owner, sauna or pool operator or spa owner) as well as/or the building’s owner or the party in charge of its management (usually the building manager).

In the event of disputes regarding the existence of the hazard or the need for repairs, Environmental Services may handle the matter, perform the required inspections and comment on the hazard’s existence. If a health hazard is found, the responsible party will be obligated to remove the hazard within a reasonable period of time.

In the case of buildings owned by the City of Helsinki (such as city schools, day-care centres, youth centres) the main party in charge of removing the health hazard is the Buildings and Public Areas Department of the Urban Environment Division, where staff such as the technical building managers work.

Additionally, in the case of City-owned buildings, Environmental Services participates as a specialist in the operations of the City divisions’ own multi-disciplinary indoor air workgroups and the City’s indoor air workgroup.

The divisions’ indoor air workgroups monitor the management of indoor air problems in individual locations such as City-owned day-care centres, schools and youth centres. The City’s own indoor air workgroup develops shared practices and measures for the City’s different divisions for solving indoor air problems, for example.



 06.12.2019 19:32