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    STUDIA AMBIENTUM - Issue no. 1 / 2011  
         
  Article:   EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT AS A COMPONENT OF INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE.

Authors:  OLIVIA ANCA RUSU, IRINA DUMITRAŞCU, CRISTIAN POP, ANGELA VALCAN, IULIA NEAMŢIU.
 
       
         
  Abstract:  The workplace today is becoming more complex. The variety of risks associated with workplace exposure to chemical, physical, and biological agents is increasing. Industrial hygiene is defined as “that science and art devoted to the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of those environmental factors or stresses, arising in or from the workplace, which may cause sickness, impaired health and well-being, or significant discomfort and inefficiency among workers or among the citizens of the community.” So, the first priority of the industrial hygienist is to protect the health of workers, but health risk is not the only risk he or she is asked to manage. Others would be regulatory risks, legal risks, and risks related to the anxiety inherently associated with many people’s response to exposures. Exposure assessment is the heart of industrial hygiene programs as it supports all of the functional elements (hazardous materials management, engineering controls, administrative controls, personal protective equipment, medical surveillance, exposure monitoring, education and training). Occupational exposure assessments are performed in work-places employing a few, and up to, maybe, thousands of workers. The magnitude of these exposures varies from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, and day-to-day. For the industrial hygienist, the primary goal is to assess the exposures and occupational health risks for all workers to all environmental agents on all days. The challenge is to do this accurately and efficiently, regardless of the diversity of exposures across workers and across time. A thorough understanding of exposures allows the industrial hygiene program, including control efforts, to be prioritized to protect employees and manage exposure-related risks. It also puts the industrial hygienist in position to better manage the unpredictable changes that will occur both in knowledge of the health effects of environmental agents and in society’s tolerance of workplace exposures. Coupled with good work history information, comprehensive exposure assessments will enable better epidemiology and refinement of our understanding of the relationship between occupational exposures and disease.

Key words: exposure, industrial hygiene, occupational, monitoring
 
         
     
         
         
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