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Just because a scientific consensus does not exist, or research has not been done, does not mean that workers and safety reps should not act. Increasing numbers of workers are doing their own research, usually helped by their trade unions. This is sometimes called workers' epidemiology, lay epidemiology or participatory research. It might involve gathering and analysing information by questionnaire, or pinpointing health problems by body mapping.

Getting useful information from a questionnaire depends on asking the right questions, and the best way of doing this is by developing the questionnaire within the group of workers concerned. There are, however, several standard questionnaires available to survey particular workplace health problems, which could be used as the basis of such a questionnaire. The GPMU, for example, is currently involved in piloting a questionnaire to measure the rate of occupational skin disease among printers in the Nottingham area. But gathering data is only the first step, the information will need to be analysed (cheap computer packages are available to do this) and acted upon!

"One of best sources of information on occupational hazards is one of the most frequently overlooked - exposed workers" (H. Frumkin in Levy and Wegman).

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