Diagnosing occupational diseases. Examples from shellfish industry

Neðst á síðunni er hægt að nálgast greinina í heild sinni með því að smella á hlekkinn View/OpenIt is very important to report suspected occupational diseases in Iceland to the Administration of Occupational Safety and Health, so they can be diagnosed, investigated in details and improvements made. This article describes the illness of clam workers at Thornórshöfn, a small village in the northern part of Iceland. It lead to a detailed investigation and the diagnosis of clamworkers hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Many specialists participated in the study that lead to improvement in the factory that has benefitted the workers.Mikilvægt er að tilkynna um atvinnusjúkdóma til Vinnueftirlits ríkisins því þá er hægt að greina þá, rannsaka ítarlega og gera tillögur til úrbóta. Hér er lýst veikindum starfsmanna í kúskelvinnslu á Þórshöfn sem leiddu til mjög yfirgripsmikillar rannsóknar og til greiningar kúfisksóttar sem er tegund ofsanæmislungnabólgu. Margir aðilar tóku þátt rannsókninni sem leiddi til endurbóta á verksmiðjunni sem hafa komið starfsfólki til góða

Existing Default Values and Recommendations for Exposure Assessment - A Nordic Exposure Group Project 2011

Default values are often used in exposure assessments e.g. in modelling because of lack of actually measured data.  The quality of the exposure assessment outcome is therefore heavily dependent on the validity and representativeness this input data. Today the used default factors consist of a wide range of more or less well-documented values originating from many different sources. The purpose of this report is to give an overview and to evaluate exposure factors that are currently used by the authorities and industry in the exposure assessments for both adults (occupational and consumer exposure) and children in relation to REACH.  Another important purpose of the report is to contribute towards a further harmonisation of exposure factors by giving recommendations of most valid and representative defaults.  These recommendations can be used besides REACH also in biocide's and plant protection product's exposure assessments. The exposure default values were collected from the relevant European sources (ECHA, Consexpo, EUSES, Biocide TNsG, ECETOC, ExpoFacts) as well as from WHO and US-EPA. The following key default factors selected to the evaluation: body weight, body surface area, inhalation rate, soil and dust ingestion, drinking water, food intake, non-dietary ingestion factors, lifetime expectancy, activity factors and consumer product