Abstract
Expert testimonies commonly reduce the establishment of causal links between work and health/illness solely to the dichotomy of work/personal life. Based on the assumptions from the fields of Workers Health and Work-Related Mental Health, this essay problematizes the results of this issue, namely the difficulties faced by workers in establishing the causal link between their ailments/illnesses, whose more complex causality is explained through several mediations that are often overlooked by the limited expert acts restricted only to clinical anamneses based on Occupational Medicine, Hygiene, and Occupational Health. Overcoming the idea of cause and effect involves understanding that the process of falling ill is social and historical, and requires exploring the mediations between work and illness to elucidate singular symptomatology based on the collective wear and tear experience. Such an investigation should simultaneously problematize the very work processes of the social actors involved in the expert investigations, starting from the priorities defined by the workers themselves who act as subjects in the analysis of work-related harm to health.
Keywords:
occupational health; expert testimony; causality; occupational diseases; public health surveillance