Occupational medicine has a long tradition in Uppsala where the famous Carl von Linné was the first occupational physician. He described the Orsa disease, what happened to be silicosis and caused the death of many young miners. Already at that time he also tried to impose preventive strategies to minimize the risk of occupational diseases and death.
 
The Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine includes one clinical unit at Akademiska Sjukhuset serving Uppsala, Dalecarlia and Gävleborg and one university unit at the Department of Medical Sciences at the Uppsala University. The activities are well integrated.
 
The main task for occupational and environmental medicine today is to find exposures at workplaces and in the indoor and outdoor environment, which may affect the human being in a negative or positive way. The negative exposures should be eliminated and the positive ones strengthened. The working life and our environment changes rapidly and one challenge is to keep up with this changing world in order to protect the health of the inhabitants in the society.
 
Preventive strategies for the work environment and the general environment as well as investigations and help to individual patients are the main tasks for the Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in Uppsala.
 
Chemical and physical factors still remains big problems and health effects from noise, vibrations and factors causing allergy and hyperreactivity are prevalent among the patients at the clinic. Most of the patients visiting the clinic are referred to us from other specialists and the insurance authorities. Our task is to find out if an association of causal origin exists between the work or environment and the disease the patient has. This is often a rather complicated matter and needs investigations from different specialists within the clinic like physicians, hygienists, toxicologists, ergonomists and psychologists.
 
Physical and chemical exposures as well as very heavy work have decreased in Sweden but an increase in ergonomic problems from static and repetitive exposures on the physical side and psychosocial problems are common. Stress related problems and burnout symptoms has increased. The association between work factors, private life, personality and these disorders are not very well understood and are investigated.
 
In Sweden today about one million persons aged 18-64 is not gainfully employed. They are long-time sick-listed, have an early retirement due to illness or are unemployed. Studies on rehabilitation, return to work and part time sick-listing are of great interest to our department.
 
Farm work a rare in Sweden these days but still many persons work very hard at their farms all week around. The effects especially on the lungs and airways from farm work are one research area at the clinic.
 
For environmental medicine an important task is to answer questions from other societal authorities concerning new building plans and other activities that can influence the environment, for example how to plan the traffic in the centre of Uppsala in order to minimize noise and pollution, how to deposit rest products from a steel plant in order not to harm the environment and risk the health of people or the enlargement of the oil depot in the harbour of Gävle.
 
Effects of indoor climate both at private homes and public places like schools have been a main interest at the department for many years. Hyperreactive reactions and comfort problems can be the result of new building techniques and energy saving efforts. The environment around stables are another interest for the department in order to investigate and decrease the dispersion of allergens. 
 
We have an international profile with contacts with various research groups in Europe and are involved in EU-financed projects. Furthermore there are bilateral research collaborations with Estonia, Norway, Iran, China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Canada. There have also been collaborations in teaching, including development of courses in occupational and environmental medicine in the Baltic States and Russia. We have also been consulted by WHO, Europe and the European Commission as experts on indoor environment and health.
 
We participate in the project RHINES which is a multi-centre study of respiratory diseases in a cohort of 18,000 young adults and collaborate with lung clinics in seven medical centres (Uppsala, Umeå, Gothenburg, Tartu, Bergen, Århus, and Reykjavik). In addition there is collaboration with with the department of Occupational Medicine in Bergen, Norway concerning the indoor environment in universities. There is also collaboration with other Nordic countries concerning the working environment of nurses.
 
Our participation in the multi-centre study “European community respiratory health survey” (ECRHSII) involves collaboration with lung clinics and research institutes in 26 cities in EU, together with centres in USA, Australia, and New Zealand. This includes outdoor and indoor environments, together with occupational and childhood environments. HESE (Health effects of the school environment) and the intervention project HESEINT are two EU-funded projects that include schools in Uppsala, Oslo, Århus, Reims (France), together with Udine and Siena (Italy). Another EU-project (GERIE) studies the indoor environment in homes for the elderly and its effect on the occupants. We are also involved in collaboration within nutrition, nutrient allergy, and research into the health consequences of buckwheatwith the University of Lubljana, Slovakia, and the National Institute for Nutrition in Rome.
 
We collaborate with several institutes in a number of Asian countries. This includes researchers in universities in Kobe, Japan, in Chunchon, Korea, in Shanghai, Taiyuan and Guanzhou, China, in Kebangsaan University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and with the ministries for health and education in Iran. We participate in a large population study based on the Canadian prairie, in collaboration with the Institute of Agricultural, Rural and Environmental Health, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. The study involves the risk of atopy in connection with a polymorphism in TLR4 (Toll-like receptor 4).
 
There are presently PhD students and postdocs from China and Iran at our institution.