Nokolai Grigorevich BRITANOV is head of the Laboratory. He graduated the sanitary and hygiene department of the State Medical School, Rostov, by specialty of sanitary in 1974. He earned his Ph.D in 1980 for the work he did in hygiene.
Since 1974, he has been at the RIHTOP.
His professional interests include hygienic evaluation of work conditions at productions dealing with highly dangerous technologies, medical and ecological expertise of regions with allocated dangerous facilities and risk assessment for health personnel and community.
He is author of more than 70 scientific papers.
For information, please contact:
Telephone: (8442) 78-62-10 
E-mail:

The scope of problems that the Laboratory of Occupational Health deals with includes the following. Assessment of adverse factors at facilities using extremely dangerous chemical substances. Sanitary and epidemiological estimation of design works for facilities the productive processes at which would be based on specifically dangerous technologies. Expert identification of cause-and-effect relationships between occupation and disease at potentially hazardous facilities. Exposure-related risk assessment for health of personnel and community. Workplace validation by working conditions and safety certification of jobs.

A main group of tasks for the Occupational Health Laboratory involves hygienic supporting of jobs at the facilities using extremely and highly dangerous chemical substances. This requires the development of standards that will increase safety and protection of employees, as well as general population living near and around the objects in question. The researches are carried out using up-to-date and methodologically useful approaches. Technical equipment of the Laboratory allows measuring and evaluating most of adverse factors in the work environment. The rated values of potential contamination levels of specifically dangerous chemicals that may occur in non-routine situations are employed, and appropriate actions to be undertaken on scene are available. A number of regulating and methodical documents that have been developed on a basis of the data obtained from studies are already in actual practice. These documents regulate the issues of sanitary and epidemiological surveillance and work environment monitoring at the facilities that use extremely dangerous substances.

The Laboratory involves 4 research associates who earned their Ph.D. on hygiene.

Promising areas of research activities relate to hygienic evaluation of occupational conditions and their effects on health state of personnel engaged in operating specifically dangerous technologies. Social and hygienic monitoring is planned to conduct at locations near and around the objects in question. It will be aimed at providing the system of chemical safety in large administrative and industrial centers, with the use of various types of indicators involved in such monitoring. Register of potentially dangerous substances should be created to facilitate the assessment of risk and epidemiological situations in large administrative and industrial centers. Another important task concerns the development of sanitary and hygienic standards on safety of workplace activities associated with reconfiguring of former Soviet chemical weapons production facilities for peaceful uses or their liquidation.