European Proposal for Core Information for the Storage and Exchange of Workplace Exposure Measurements on Chemical Agents

Measurements of personal exposure level are generally greater than or equal to concentrations found at some fixed location in the body of the workroom. This article presents a theoretical analysis of such differences using a simple model of exposure, implemented as a two-compartment mass balance model with a constant emission rate. Simulated exposure levels (termed the near-field) and the concentration at a fixed location (the far-field) were obtained for five room sizes (30 to 3000 m3), each with five general ventilation rates (0.3 to 30 air-changes per hour) and three levels of air movement in the vicinity of the worker (generally 3 to 30 m3/min). The ratio of near- to far-field concentrations from the simulations ranged from unity in small poorly ventilated rooms to 24 in large well ventilated areas, which compares favorably with actual measurement data. The predicted concentrations obtained in small rooms (< 100 m3) with less than one air-change per hour were almost 40 times higher than in larger rooms. The results from these simulations have been used to modify the original exposure model to better reflect the likely effect of general ventilation on workers' exposure.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Room Size and General Ventilation on the Relationship Between Near and Far-Field Concentrations

Cherrie¹

1999

“…(18) There is an effort to extend this to the European Community. (19) In its initial stages, a national occupational exposure data bank would be a relatively imperfect tool, because of the differences in the way different parties collect exposure data, but the adoption of the joint recommendations would address this obstacle. 4.…”

Section: How Should the Strategic Plans Change To Bring About A New Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exposure Assessment Must Stop Being Local

Gómez¹

2000

Exposure assessment activities today are hampered by a narrow focus that is detrimental to preventive occupational health goals. Exposure data useful for disease prevention are not adequately collected, and exposure surveillance tools do not receive adequate attention. Professional recommendations to improve this state of affairs have been in existence since the early 1990s, but have not been widely adopted. Although the Government Performance and Results Act could help address these shortcomings--by enhancing exposure surveillance activities in the OSHA and NIOSH Strategic Plans--the agencies have not taken advantage of this opportunity. Their strategic plans rely largely on accident data to measure performance, despite the fact that occupational disease has a much larger toll. This article makes recommendations to address these shortcomings by increasing the role of exposure surveillance tools in the agency strategic plans.

“…(4) In fact, the data owners are not necessarily the principal users or bene ciaries of base data utilization and changing the list of criteria to be entered during an survey can generate extra work, whose usefulness does not always appear justi ed. It was in this context that the working group developed a new data acquisition system for coding the core information, taking into account the recommendations formulated by the AIHA-ACGIH R (5) and by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working conditions (called the European working group) (6) working groups.…”

Section: Reorganization Of the Colchic Databasementioning

confidence: 99%

COLCHIC - Occupational Exposure to Chemical Agents Database: Current Content and Development Perspectives

Vincent

Jeandel²

2001

Set up in 1987, COLCHIC is a database for occupational exposure to chemical agents. Eight French regional health insurance fund (Caisse Régionale d'Assurance Maladie-CRAM) interregional laboratories and the French national research and safety institute (Institut National de Recherche et de Securite-INRS) laboratories have stored results and information from chemical agent exposure measurements on this database. More than 10 years later, 400,000 measurement results of exposure to 600 substances are now stored on COLCHIC. Utilization of data from this base is limited by the quality and absence of certain information, so a working group has been formed to develop a new data retrieval system, which takes into account recommendations formulated by the AIHA-ACGIH and European working groups. Utilization of this new coding system should allow improved description of workplace exposure conditions in the near future. This data retrieval system is currently being validated and should be used by the laboratories concerned during the course of 2001.