Occupational Hygiene

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Occupational Hygiene

• Dr Roberto DOnise
• Occupational and Environmental Physician

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Occupational Hygiene

• Defined as the science of recognition, evaluation
  control of hazards in the workplace environment
  which could impact on the health and wellbeing of
  a worker, with consideration also given to the
  local environment and surrounding community.

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Objectives of a Program

• Primary prevention
• Prevent or avoid establishment of a disease or
  adverse health effect
• Secondary prevention
• Reduce disease recurrence or progression
• Reduce morbidity associated with disease

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Types of hazards

• Chemical
• Physical
• Biological
• Biomechanical
• Psychological

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• Anticipation
• Recognition
• Evaluation
• Control Hierarchy of Controls
• Engineering / Design
• Administrative
• Personal Protection
• Environmental and / or Biological monitoring
• Risk Assessment
• Training

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Hazard identification

• Workplace Walkthrough
• Work process
• Raw products ? work materials produced waste
  products.
• Equipment used, operational methods
• Work practices including cycle time, physical
  exertions
• Frequency duration of exposure ? including
  seasonal variation
• Workers- who is exposed, eg maintenance workers,
  visitors.
• spatial location of each hazard and plant layout
• Health safety controls in place including
  maintenance housekeeping
• Use of Personal Protective Equipment
• Selection, fit and maintenance

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Hazard identification

• Data ? MSDS, Monitoring, surveillance, incident
  reporting, PPE maintenance
• Workforce interviews
• Illness records
• Health effects - Literature
• Toxicological data, epidemiological studies
• Exposure standards ? Threshold limit values, Time
  weighted averages,
• Legislation ? guidance notes, standards etc

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Hazard Evaluation

• Quantify exposure
• Dose, physical forms, exposure routes
• Environmental monitoring
• Direct/ extraction
• Static or personal breathing zone monitoring
• Biological monitoring
• Urine, blood, hair, exhaled air
• Metabolism, multiple routes, all sources (occ/Non
  occ)
• Health surveillance

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• Risk assessment
• Evaluation of significance of hazards
  probability of occurrence
• Severity ? consequences to people and equipment
  or environment
• Probability of occurrence ? frequency duration,
  avoidance, speed of risk, awareness of risk,
  practical experience, reliability of current
  controls.

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Hazard Control

• Hierarchy of control
• Control at source
• Control at path
• Control at receiver
• Safe workplace vs. safe worker

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Source

• Elimination
• Design
• Substitution
• to a less toxic substance or modification to a
  less hazardous process
• eg wet process or airless spray painting
• Isolation
• Isolate hazardous process or worker
• Reduce number of workers exposed

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Exposure pathway

• Ventilation
• Local Exhaust Ventilation
• Dilution
• Increase spatial distance
• House keeping
• Immediate clean up

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Receiver

• Administrative and work practices
• Staff rotation (reduce exposure)
• Equipment maintenance
• Hours, incentive schemes
• Manual handling (eg)
• PPE
• Selection, fit testing, maintenance
• Education training
• Understanding of hazards and control methods

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Occupational health surveillance

• The ongoing and systematic collection, analysis
  and interpretation of occupational health data
  with the aim of detecting adverse health effects
  at an early stage and the control of workplace
  hazards.
• Conditions required for health surveillance
• Need an identifiable disease or adverse health
  outcome
• The disease or outcome is related to an exposure
• There is a likelihood that the health effect may
  occur
• There are valid techniques for detecting health
  effects

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Designing a program

• Consultation ?Workers and management
• Identify program owner administrator
• Identify eligible workers for testing
• Identify application ? local company, industrial
  sector, national, international
• Identify comply with any legislative
  requirements
• Consider cost and resource allocation

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• Selection of test
• Sensitive and specific
• Easy to interpret
• Acceptable to worker
• Safe and non invasive
• Cost
• Frequency timing of test
• Pre Employment Medical Assessment
• Agreed actions for abnormal results
• Repeat, review controls, removal, further
  investigation

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Management of Results

• Feedback to individuals
• Confidentiality of results secure record
  keeping
• Comparison with previous results
• Action on abnormal results
• Analysis of group trends
• Feedback to OHS committee management

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• Dr Roberto DOnise
• Occupational and Environmental Physician
• CHG Consultancy Services
• T 08 8352 9800
• E occphys_at_chg.net.au