Toxicology

The twenty-third entry is la surveillance biologique, the measuring of a substance or its breakdown products in blood or urine to learn what a worker has actually taken in. The adjective is the word to slow down on, because in a French hospital it does a job that « biological » has never done in English. There la biologie is not the science of living things but the laboratory that runs the tests: la biologie médicale is what English calls laboratory medicine, un examen biologique is a blood or urine test, and le biologiste who signs the results is a doctor or a pharmacist rather than somebody who studies frogs. A report reading pas d’anomalie biologique means the blood work came back clean. So the entry changes meaning with the person writing it. In occupational toxicology it is biomonitoring, a measure of exposure. On a hospital ward, la surveillance biologique d’un traitement is the round of blood tests that checks a drug is doing no harm, the follow-up any patient on lithium knows well. Read the adjective by the building it comes from: a factory or an agency points to exposure, a hospital to the laboratory.