[Chemical risk assessment in the construction industry: principles and critical issues].

Risk assessment (RA) represents the first step to ensure the protection of the workers' health in all work sectors, production and services included. For this reason RA has become a legal duty for the occupational physician in his/her professional activity. The basic concepts of RA have been developed as a formal procedure for the management of chemical risks but they are currently applied to protect human health against all types of occupational and environmental risk factors. In the construction industry, in particular, chemical risk assessment is specially difficult due to the complexity of the working condition, and the variability and multiplicity of exposure. The critical aspects of RA in the construction industry will be discussed here, in the attempt to highlight how the occupational physician, making use of traditional and new tools, including biological monitoring, can address and partly overcome them.