An activity of "acceptable risk", the one of the Occupational Health and Safety Professionals?

The aim of the present study refers to the analysis of the work of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) professionals at work, considering the constraints to which they are confronted and the implications they suffer at their health level. So, it was privileged a qualitative methodology through doing interviews to eight OHS professionals framed in enterprises of medium and large dimension. Through the analysis of the results it is possible to verify that the OHS professionals, responsible for the preservation of the safety and health of the others, are not themselves indifferent to the exposure of the risks they evaluate, and to intrinsic constraints to the evolution of the own activity, of which it is example the construction of "evidences", requiring a heavier and heavier work at distance of the field. And the implications on health reported to this kind of situations are made explicit by participants. Therefore, far from assuming these risks as "acceptable", because they are "intrinsic" to the activity, here we try to give visibility taking the risk of, ironically, being these workers "forgotten" by the principles that rule their own activity.