Introduction:

The food sector includes a reasonable number of workers involved. Empirically, there is no doubt that this sector has work areas that by their nature involve a series of risk factors that can affect the health. Knowing and cataloguing these, in order to be able to draw up a preventive plan, is essential for the health of the worker (and the entity that employs him). This article aims to gather the main occupational risk factors/occupational risks, occupational diseases and recommended protective measures at kitchen workers.

Methodology:

This is a Scoping Review, initiated through a search carried out in the Medline database (via Pubmed), carried out during the month of November 2023, encompassing articles (in Portuguese and English), with the keywords "kitchen worker" and "occupational" in the title, with no time limit. The risk analysis tool "Online interactive risk assessment" of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work was used as a complement.

Content:

The main risk factors found are exposure to chemical agents (products used to clean facilities and/or fruit and vegetables, or by-products from cooking); ergonomic risks (maintained/forced postures; repetitive movements, manual handling of loads); accidents (falls at the same level or at different levels; handling of equipment/utensils that increase the risk of burns, cuts and/or amputations); contact with electrical equipment, noise, heat stress and psychosocial risks. The main occupational diseases refer to musculoskeletal, psychosocial or dermatological conditions. Each unit should, however, be evaluated individually, according to its intrinsic characteristics.

Conclusions:

The safety and health of kitchen workers are issues that deserve constant attention from employers, regulators and society at large. This article explored some of the main occupational hazards and listed the need for effective preventive measures. Reducing these risks is not only an ethical and legal responsibility, but a smart strategy to improve operational efficiency and quality of services, avoiding accidents, minimizing absenteeism, but also improving the productivity of companies. It would be pertinent to develop investigations that assess the national reality

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