Understanding the limitations and application of occupational exposure models in a Reach context

Exposure modeling plays a significant role for regulatory organizations, companies, and professionals involved in assessing and managing occupational health risks in workplaces. One context in which occupational exposure models are particularly relevant is the REACH Regulation in the European Union (Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006). This commentary describes the models for the occupational inhalation exposure assessment of chemicals within the REACH framework, their theoretical background, applications, and limitations, as well as the latest developments and priorities for model improvement. Summing up the debate, despite its relevance and importance in the context of REACH not being in question, occupational exposure modeling needs to be improved in many respects. There is a need to reach a wide consensus on several key issues (e.g., the theoretical background and the reliability of modeling tools), to consolidate and monitor model performance and regulatory acceptance, and to align practices and policies regarding exposure modeling

Occupational Exposure to Halogenated Anaesthetic Gases in Hospitals: A Systematic Review of Methods and Techniques to Assess Air Concentration Levels

Objective During the induction of gaseous anaesthesia, waste anaesthetic gases (WAGs) can be released into workplace air. Occupational exposure to high levels of halogenated WAGs may lead to adverse health effects; hence, it is important to measure WAGs concentration levels to perform risk assessment and for health protection purposes. Methods A systematic review of the scientific literature was conducted on two different scientific databases (Scopus and PubMed). A total of 101 studies, focused on sevoflurane, desflurane and isoflurane exposures in hospitals, were included in this review. Key information was extracted to provide (1) a description of the study designs (e.g., monitoring methods, investigated occupational settings, anaesthetic gases in use); (2) an evaluation of time trends in the measured concentrations of considered WAGs; (3) a critical evaluation of the sampling strategies, monitoring methods and instruments used. Results Environmental monitoring was prevalent (68%) and mainly used for occupational exposure assessment during adult anaesthesia (84% of cases). Real-time techniques such as photoacoustic spectroscopy and infrared spectrophotometry were used in 58% of the studies, while off-line approaches such as active or passive sampling followed by GC-MS analysis were used less frequently (39%). Conclusions The combination of different instrumental techniques allowing the collection of data with different time resolutions was quite scarce (3%) despite the fact that this would give the opportunity to obtain reliable data for testing the compliance with 8 h occupational exposure limit values and at the same time to evaluate short-term exposures

Personal control of the indoor environment in offices: Relations with building characteristics, influence on occupant perception and reported symptoms related to the building-the officair project

Personal control over various indoor environment parameters, especially in the last decades, appear to have a significant role on occupants' comfort, health and productivity. To reveal this complex relationship, 7441 occupants of 167 recently built or retrofitted office buildings in eight European countries participated in an online survey about personal/health/work data as well as physical/psycho-social information. The relationship between the types of control available over indoor environments and the perceived personal control of the occupants was examined, as well as the combined effect of the control parameters on the perceived comfort using multilevel statistical models. The results indicated that most of the occupants have no or low control on noise. Half of the occupants declared no or low control on ventilation and temperature conditions. Almost one-third of them remarked that they do not have satisfactory levels of control for lighting and shading from sun conditions. The presence of operable windows was shown to influence occupants' control perception over temperature, ventilation, light and noise. General building characteristics, such as floor number and floor area, office type, etc., helped occupants associate freedom positively with control perception. Combined controlling parameters seem to have a strong relation with overall comfort, as well as with perception regarding amount of privacy, office layout and decoration satisfaction. The results also indicated that occupants with more personal control may have less building-related symptoms. Noise control parameter had the highest impact on the occupants' overall comfort

Assessment of exposure determinants and exposure levels by using stationary concentration measurements and a probabilistic near-field/far-field exposure model

Background: The Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation requires the establishment of Conditions of Use (CoU) for all exposure scenarios to ensure good communication of safe working practices. Setting CoU requires the risk assessment of all relevant Contributing Scenarios (CSs) in the exposure scenario. A new CS has to be created whenever an Operational Condition (OC) is changed, resulting in an excessive number of exposure assessments. An efficient solution is to quantify OC concentrations and to identify reasonable worst-case scenarios with probabilistic exposure modeling. Methods: Here, we appoint CoU for powder pouring during the industrial manufacturing of a paint batch by quantifying OC exposure levels and exposure determinants. The quantification was performed by using stationary measurements and a probabilistic Near-Field/Far-Field (NF/FF) exposure model. Work shift and OC concentration levels were quantified for pouring TiO 2 from big bags and small bags, pouring Micro Mica from small bags, and cleaning. The impact of exposure determinants on NF concentration level was quantified by (1) assessing exposure determinants correlation with the NF exposure level and (2) by performing simulations with different OCs. Results: Emission rate, air mixing between NF and FF and local ventilation were the most relevant exposure determinants affecting NF concentrations. Potentially risky OCs were identified by performing Reasonable Worst Case (RWC) simulations and by comparing the exposure 95 th percentile distribution with 10% of the occupational exposure limit value (OELV). The CS was shown safe except in RWC scenario (ventilation rate from 0.4 to 1.6 1/h, 100 m 3 room, no local ventilation, and NF ventilation of 1.6 m 3/min). Conclusions: The CoU assessment was considered to comply with European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) legislation and EN 689 exposure assessment strategy for testing compliance with OEL values. One RWC scenario would require measurements since the exposure level was 12.5% of the OELV

Beyond Paradigms in Cultural Astronomy. Proceedings of the 27th SEAC conference held together with the EAA

Proceedings of the 27th SEAC conference held together with the EAA.-- Editors: A. César González-García, Roslyn M. Frank, Lionel D. Sims, Michael A. Rappenglück, Georg Zotti, Juan A. Belmonte, Ivan Šprajc.Cultural Astronomy is the endeavour to understand the role of the sky in past and present societies, and how these societies incorporated the sky into their culture. This broad ranging discipline is closely related to archaeology when investigating material remains of the past. Cultural Astronomy also explores the role of the heavens from the perspectives of the anthropological sciences. In recent decades the discipline has been concerned with methodological and theoretical issues. This volume offers chapters based on presentations at the 27th SEAC meeting held in Bern (2019). These chapters provide a vivid image of front-line research in diverse areas, from Roman light and shadow effects to highlight power, to Maya city organization, Etruscan temple orientation or the ontology of the sky.Peer reviewe

Occupational Exposure Of Olfactometric Examiners: Possible Solutions For The Risk Assessment

The aim of this paper is the definition of a new theoretical method for the evaluation of occupational exposure risk for workers involved in dynamic olfactometry. These workers, also called panellists, can be exposed to hazardous pollutants potentially present in odourous mixtures. Despite the relevance of this topic, in the regulation and the scientific literature, a standardized method to evaluate the panellists’ occupational is not provided. Therefore, this work aims to suggest practical solutions for the risk assessment of olfactometric workers. The proposed approach is based on the quantification of non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic risk for panellists’, based on the evaluation of hazard indexes (HIs) and the inhalation risks (IRs) for the odorous mixtures. In addition, this approach aims to overcome the critical aspects observed in the application of the available literature models to real odorous samples. In particular, the absence of a clear definition of occupational exposure concentration and the occurence of compounds without a toxicological threshold in the mixture represents a problem of the available assessment models. Therefore, this study proposes a selection of the most appropriate reference values for each pollutant in a real odorous sample. This implementation allows to calculate, in a robust manner, the minimum dilution value to be adopted during the analysis of odorous compounds

Rischio occupazionale e olfattometria dinamica: proposta di un metodo per la valutazione del rischio per gli esaminatori coinvolti nelle analisi olfattometriche

L'olfattometria dinamica coinvolge degli esaminatori, i quali sono esposti durante le analisi a molecole potenzialmente pericolose presenti nei campioni odorigeni, per cui risulta fondamentale valutare il rischio di esposizione per questi lavoratori. Nonostante la sua rilevanza, ancora non esiste un metodo normato per valutare il rischio occupazionale per gli esaminatori olfattometrici. Inoltre, i modelli proposti all’interno della letteratura scientifica presentano alcune criticità. Pertanto, questo lavoro mira a suggerire un nuovo modello per la valutazione del rischio, basato sul calcolo dell’Hazard Index (HI) e del inhalation risk (IR), approfondendo le problematiche evidenziate durante lo studio di campioni reali. Questo approccio, infatti, propone una gerarchia tra le diverse tipologie di valori limite disponibili, per calcolare, in modo robusto, il valore minimo di diluizione da adottare durante le analisi.Dynamic olfactometry involves directly examiners, who are exposed to hazardous pollutants potentially present in odorous samples and it is fundamental to evaluate the occupational exposure risk for these workers. Despite the importance of this topic, a standardized method to evaluate this risk is not yet provided. In addition, the models described in the scientific literature present some critical aspects. Therefore, this work aims to suggest a new model for the risk assessment of olfactometric workers, based on the determination of Hazard Index (HI) and inhalation risk (IR). The novelty of this approach is the overcoming of critical aspects observed in the literature models if applied to real odorous samples, proposing a hierarchical selection from the different databases available. These implementations allow calculating, in a robust manner, the minimum dilution value to be adopted during olfactometric analysis