Piezo-Optical Dosimeters for Occupational and Environmental Monitoring

Abstract

Occupational and environmental monitoring, driven by growing awareness of health hazards and increasingly stringent national and international standards, is becoming focussed on the need for data relating to ever smaller geographical regions, and particularly for personal exposure data. Such personal data are not only the best way to demonstrate compliance with regulations, but also provide the basis for individual exposure/health correlations upon which improved standards can be securely based. The requirements for measurement systems to be used in such local and personal monitoring on a large scale are demanding. They include low cost, small size, reliability, ease of use (preferably by unskilled operators) and the ability to record time-weighted-average exposures over short (e.g. 15 min) and long (e.g. 8 h) periods. Ideally the system should use similar monitoring devices, measured using the same generic low-cost equipment, for a wide range of analytes. Preferably the monitoring device should be capable of measuring exposures to several analytes simultaneously, and the measurement system should include data logging to guarantee proper exposure records. Until recently very few, if any, systems could satisfy these requirements.