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Department Health Protection

The Department Health Protection supports public health and health care for problems caused or aggravated by the environment, including indoor pollution, the working context, consumer products, and food. We fulfill this mission through servicing including expert advice, through education and through applied research. Our main stakeholders are the hospitals, the ministries, and the services for occupational medicine in Luxembourg.

The Department Health Protection hosts three Services:

 

  • The Service “Environmental Hygiene and Human Biological Monitoring” carries out laboratory analyses – chemical and microbiological – in dust, air and surface samples (ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation). In parallel, the Service analyses the concentrations of substances or their metabolites directly in human medical samples, for example blood, urine, hair. The Service measures not only human biomarkers of exposure (ISO 15189 and ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation), but is expanding its portfolio of human biomarkers of effect relevant in the pathways of disease development and progression.

 

  • The Service “Medical Expertise and Data Intelligence” hosts the medical, epidemiological and toxicological expertise in environmental and occupational health/medicine. The Service supports the National Service for Environmental Medicine at the Hospital Center Emile Mayrisch (CHEM) and is in charge of the European science-policy programs and the epidemiological surveys in the general and working population in Luxembourg that include human biological monitoring and/or environmental/occupational exposure assessment.

 

  • The Service “Food monitoring” carries out laboratory analyses – chemical and microbiological – in human food, food contact materials and feed. The Service also provides scientific expertise in these domains. It is one of the laboratories ensuring citizen’s health protection with regard to the human food chain in Luxembourg and takes care of multiple analyses in the domain for Saarland.

A departmental administrative team and a departmental quality and technical coordination team support the Services and the department head.

 

the team