Occupational exposures of maintenance staff: characterization, developments and relations with outsourcing. Use of the French SUMER 2010 survey conducted by the DARES

Maintenance activities are identified as critical ones to systems reliability, but also to the health and safety of operators. Although studies on the safety of maintenance staff grew in recent years, few health data or knowledge on occupational exposures of maintenance staff are today available. This work was consequently aimed at a better knowledge of these exposures, by a characterization of the latter, an examination of their evolution and analyzes of their relations with the outsourcing of these activities. In this aim, an use of the French SUMER 2010 survey was carried out and different types of analyzes were conducted. The results allow a characterization of the occupational exposures of the maintenance staff and show that they are very different from those of their production colleagues. They reveal some stability in the exposures of these personnel with regard to the previous survey. However, the analyzes do not highlight any major effect of the contractual relationship of their employer on the occupational exposures of maintenance staff. These results are discussed and some limits and perspectives of the analyzes carried out, are presented. Key words: Maintenance. Occupational exposures. Outsourcing. Work organization