When NIOSH promulgated its Respiratory Protective Devices rule in 1995 (Title 42 code of Federal Regulations, Part 84), which specified approval standards for respirators, no test for evaluating the fitting characteristics of filtering facepiece respirators was included. The consequences of the lack of a fit test in 42 CFR 84 included the approval of devices that did not fit the general respirator-wearing population very well, higher costs for conducting the OSHA-required fit test, and the potential for wearing to pass a fit test in error. Today, the need still exists for a fit test for use by manufacturers of filtering facepiece respirators and conformity assessment organizations.
The industrial hygiene community has witnessed exponential growth in the use of sensors, especially by individuals. Remote wireless sensors are now monitoring worker health, the environment, agriculture, work sites, disaster relief, and "smart" buildings and facilities.
At the time this article was written, new rulemakings were under consideration at OSHA and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that would propose changes to occupational exposure limits for beryllium. Given these developments, it’s a good time to review the tools and methods available to IHs for assessing beryllium air and surface contamination in the workplace—what’s new and different, and what’s tried and true. The article discusses limit values and action levels for beryllium, problematic aspects of beryllium air sampling, sample preparation, sample analysis, and data evaluation.
Risk is an inherent aspect of our lives. Whether the topic is the nation's dietary habits, community air pollution or chemical exposures in the workplace, risk analysis is an integral part of the conversation. Risk analysis is the combined activities of assessing, managing and communicating human health risks. Interest in understanding risk from chemical exposures and other stressors has led to the formalization of health risk assessment as an applied public health science. Numerous seminal reports from the National Academies of Science (NAS) have highlighted the framework for risk assessment and risk management, as well as key changes within the practice of risk analysis. The profession of industrial hygiene has evolved to reflect the changes in health risk assessment methodology and practice. Traditional industrial hygiene practice−the anticipation, recognition, evaluation and control of occupational and environmental hazards and risks–parallels key aspects of health risk assessment. Thus, industrial hygienists have a strong history as leading practitioners of all aspects of risk analysis–health risk assessment, risk management and risk communication–within the occupational environment. Risk analysis methods and tools are important resources for articulating scientific knowledge to those who make decisions regarding public and occupational health. Just as we need to stay attuned to developments in the latest air sampling techniques, keeping current on risk analysis is equally essential. As the field of risk analysis expands, emerging techniques will be valuable for practicing industrial hygienists. Examples include: tools for addressing aggregate risk from single agents yet multiple environments (for example, work, home, car, air) and cumulative risks from multiple stressors a more thorough incorporation of cost-benefit analysis and life cycle impacts on occupational exposures for a better understanding of the economic impacts of risk management decisions improved techniques for studying how perceptions affect the acceptability of a particular risk Driven by advances in science and technology, these new risk analysis methods are allowing health professionals, including industrial hygienists, to tackle ever more complex problems and make more informed decisions. For industrial hygienists, this new era offers several opportunities. Mastery of risk analysis tools is one of our core competencies; staying ahead of the curve will serve occupational and public health well and increase our value. With this vision in mind, AIHA sponsored the 8th Risk Assessment Symposium as part of the Professional Conference on Industrial Hygiene (PCIH) in Baltimore this past November. The Symposium highlighted innovations that are fundamentally changing the practices of risk assessment, risk management and risk communication.1 Speakers at the Symposium represented experts in the fields of industrial hygiene, toxicology, occupational health and risk assessment from academia, industry and the public sector. Over the next few months, a series of articles in The Synergist will describe the key concepts presented during the Symposium. This article, the first in the series, identifies the main challenges facing industrial hygienists as we enter the new era of risk assessment.
Assessing risk in the aggregate, cumulatively, and comparatively has entered a new era in which innovative technologies and methods are allowing health science professionals to explore and solve ever more complex problems.1,2,3 Increasingly, risk assessments either support or are mandated by regulatory, management, business, and public policy decision making. They also support technical and lay educational efforts and behavior-based safety programs. Since the inception of our profession, industrial hygienists have been front and center in characterizing hazards and assessing exposures, which predates the four-step risk assessment paradigm articulated by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in its 1983 “Red Book”: hazard assessment, exposure assessment, dose-response assessment, and risk characterization. Many industrial hygienists have also participated in more recent initiatives, such as resource allocation, enterprise risk management, sustainability, and cost-benefit analysis.
Although industrial hygienists have used risk assessment for many years, some practitioners might not recognize it as a core element of the profession. Industrial hygienists routinely evaluate risk by assessing the hazard and exposure to chemical and physical agents, characterizing the subsequent risk and developing control strategies to reduce the risk. However, the process can go much deeper. This article presents the vision of the AIHA Risk Assessment Committee (RAC) for better integrating risk assessment into industrial hygiene practice.
For more than three decades, health practitioners and regulatory agencies have used risk assessment methods to characterize health risks. Risk assessment is the process of determining the likelihood and severity of health risk to an individual or population from exposure to a chemical or other stressor.1,2 Evolving methods and advances in science and technology offer several opportunities for improving risk assessment and its application to occupational settings. Cumulative Risk Assessment (CRA) Broader in scope than traditional chemical risk assessments, CRAs determine which chemicals, stressors or other risk factors are affecting certain populations. They address multiple chemical and non-chemical stressors, aggregate exposures and risks (that is, exposure to a single stressor by multiple routes), and combined risks for common health end points by chemical or stressor groupings.3,4 The EPA framework for conducting CRAs involves planning, scoping and problem formulation; analysis; and interpretation and risk characterization.5,6 This framework has been applied to CRAs of chemicals, such as organophosphate pesticides and phthalates. In addition, EPA has developed various models and web-based tools to assess aggregate and cumulative exposures and risks.7,8 The greatest strength of CRAs is their emphasis on multiple exposures (stressors) and health effects in varied populations. But it's challenging to identify common groups and develop common metrics to evaluate dissimilar risks, and because of gaps in data and methodological limitations, CRAs have yet to include non-chemical stressors or focus on occupational exposures. Biomonitoring Biomonitoring assesses human exposure by measuring chemicals or their metabolites in human tissues or fluids (blood and urine, for example). This method quantifies the amount of a chemical that has been absorbed into the body from all potential sources. Biomonitoring data are discussed in terms of biomarkers, which are commonly divided into three categories: biomarkers of exposure, biomarkers of effect and biomarkers of susceptibility.9 But the collection of bio monitoring data-which involves selecting a target population, identifying chemicals and biomarkers, collecting and analyzing samples, and interpreting the results-can be challenging. Many population-based biomonitoring efforts are under way. For example, a national survey conducted by the CDC measures numerous chemicals and their metabolites in a representative sample of the U.S. population. The findings are published periodically and represent one of the largest publicly available biomonitoring datasets.10 Biomonitoring data integrates exposures from multiple sources and pathways to provide a direct measure of total exposure and is, therefore, a powerful tool for assessing aggregate exposure and risk. This data can be used to assess trends in exposures over time, evaluate the effectiveness of exposure-reduction policies, provide direction for future research and help medical professionals diagnose people who have potentially been exposed to excessive amounts of chemicals. Collecting and analyzing biomonitoring data requires significant resources, so only a limited number of people, compounds and body fluids have been studied to date. Also, these data provide no information on exposure conditions, such as frequency, duration, magnitude of exposures or the exposure routes that contributed to the total measured body burden.
Volunteering experience is believed to provide the potential for the socialisation and interaction of the participants. By means of observations, focus group and interviews, the research attempts to analyse the volunteering process and attitude shifts in relation to volunteering. Findings of the research confirm that apart from helping the destinations, volunteers develop their personalities and attitudes towards life during their journey of helping children in rural China. A wide range of interactions and socialisation opportunities take place before, during, and after volunteering. Volunteers benefit in the confirmation of self-value, interaction, learning and socialisation. The research concludes that volunteering makes notable contribution to youth development and poverty alleviation.
