BackgroundAn anesthesiologists’ work presents with numerous occupational risks owing to the large amount of time spent inside the operating room where constant noise, anesthetic vapors, ionizing radiation, infectious agents, and psychological stress are present. Herein, we evaluated anesthesiologists’ knowledge about occupational health.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted to assess 158 anesthesiologists from a tertiary hospital on their knowledge about occupational health using a structured questionnaire.ResultsThe survey revealed a lack of knowledge on the forms of prevention of occupational accidents (74.6% did not know how to act in case of a fire during surgery, 56% failed to identify the post-anesthesia care unit as the place with the highest contamination by inhalation anesthetics, and 42.7% failed to identify all personal protective equipment) and a surprisingly high rate of lack of observance of preventive measures (30.3% washed their hands before touching every patient, 52.5% did not use gloves during intravenous access, and 88.6% used protective equipment against ionizing radiation).ConclusionsDespite improvements in safety standards in healthcare facilities, our research showed lack of knowledge about major topics on occupational health by physicians. Improving safety awareness is an important goal of training programs and continued medical education.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12871-018-0661-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.