Dust Exposure

There are many common industrial processes which cause workers to be exposed to a wide range of toxic and harmful dusts. Although official statistics are hard to come by, John Cherrie of the Institute of Occupational Medicine has estimated that in Great Britain almost 10 million workers are exposed to dust at work. Handling of

Low Toxicity Dusts–Part 2

In my last post I discussed the evidence that suggests that the “trigger values” of 10 and 4 mg/m3 that are widely used as such by many occupational hygienists for “low toxicity dusts” where an official Workplace Exposure Limit (WEL) hasn’t been set, are probably too high to prevent ill health in workers. Despite considering

Low Toxicity Dusts – Part 1

(Image source: BOHS) Regulation 2 of COSHH1 states that any dust when present in the workplace at a concentration in air equal to or greater than 10 mg/m3 of inhalable dust or 4 mg/m3 of respirable (as a time-weighted average over an 8-hour period) is considered to be a substance hazardous to health. If the

Workplace Exposure Limits

There are a number of reasons why occupational hygienists carry out workplace exposure monitoring, but in the majority of cases the primary objective will be to determine the degree of risk due to inhalation so that we can decide on whether exposure is adequately controlled. In such cases we need a benchmark against which the

Is it really necessary to memorise exposure limits?

Many years ago, on the day I started work, after my new boss had run through the company induction, shown me around the department and told me as much as he could think of about the mysterious world of occupational hygiene I’d just joined, he’d clearly had run out of ideas about what to do