Current Trends in Occupational Health and Hygiene — General Considerations IV

Summary

Traditionally, efforts towards the protection of workers in areas with exposure to chemicals have been oriented to set standards for airborne gases, vapours and particulate matter in terms of concentration and time of exposure. These efforts turned on the view that there was a threshold below which no harm would result from exposure to a chemical. In keeping with this view, tolerance levels have been set in many countries; classically the concept of safe levels of airborne contaminants in the workplace is based by air monitoring on the eight hour time-weighted average value. However, many chemicals in a great variety of technical processes occur in widely varying concentrations. In order to deal with this problem two different approaches have, in the past, been proposed - the fixing of excursion factors and the fixing of ‘ceiling’ values. Recently, in the Federal Republic of Germany, a new concept has been proposed which subdivides all occupational chemicals into five main categories, designated according to effect, and characterized by constant analytical criteria.

In contrast there are, as yet, no official standards in European countries for biological monitoring; these may be introduced by 1982 and thert are promising developments in testing for carcinogenic effect. Within this paper there is a review of some of these developments.