DEPARTMENTS
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
NICOLE GREESON, MS, CIH, is associate director of the occupational and environmental safety office at Duke University and Health System.
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A Welcome Return
BY NICOLE GREESON, AIHA PRESIDENT
The announcement last October that the former WEEL Committee had returned to AIHA as the OEL Committee generated much excitement. The OEL Committee’s work is being administered by the AIHA Guideline Foundation, which is also responsible for Emergency Response Planning Guidelines (ERPGs) and Principles of Good Practice (PGPs). The addition of OELs to the Guideline Foundation’s portfolio presents a good opportunity to reacquaint readers with these essential programs.
PROTECTING WORKERS
An AIHA OEL is much more than an eight-hour occupational exposure limit value. It’s backed by freely available supporting documentation developed by volunteer exposure scientists. OELs are based on robust best practices and rigorous vetting through committee balloting and public comment and are designed to protect workers from experiencing adverse health effects. The OEL Committee fills a gap by producing OELs for chemistries of interest for which there are no other recognized non-government OELs. In addition to OEL development and maintenance, the OEL Committee will host in-person educational sessions, will review and develop OELs in the public interest, and will entertain the development of sponsored OELs.
PROTECTING EMERGENCY RESPONDERS
Based on a one-hour exposure duration, ERPGs are intended as planning tools for emergency responders. They are currently the only up-to-date airborne levels for risk assessment of a single brief exposure to chemicals. ERPGs have applications beyond emergency response and can factor into product stewardship, management of change, and prevention through design.
The development of ERPGs is funded in part by federal grants that AIHA receives through our partnership with TRANSCAER, an organization that supports the safe transportation and handling of hazardous materials. This year, that grant money is facilitating the completion of a training module and a search engine that the ERPG Committee will use for research. Other sources of funding have included donations from companies that wish to sponsor ERPGs for specific agents and organizations that wish to support the committee’s work as a whole.
Later this year, AIHA will debut a searchable online database for ERPGs that links to the supporting documentation for each value. The interface will also deliver clearer explanations of special considerations that emergency responders need to be aware of. Eventually, the database will include OEL values, too.
OELs are based on robust best practices and rigorous vetting.
PRINCIPLES OF GOOD PRACTICE
PGPs are roadmaps practitioners can use to take their OEHS programs from a compliance-oriented approach to practices that better protect workers’ health. Last year, the Guideline Foundation published a second version of PGPs for exposure assessment strategies and first versions of PGPs for respiratory protection and noise and hearing loss prevention. A draft of PGPs for waterborne pathogens was recently completed by the Indoor Environmental Quality Committee. Working groups may form soon to develop PGPs for protective clothing and equipment, heat stress, and ergonomics.
Once PGPs are complete, the document is used to develop and deploy a State of the Art vs. Practice survey to determine what people are actually doing in their practice. The results of the survey are used to identify gaps in practice and in AIHA offerings to serve the needs of the OEHS professional. Ultimately, the PGPs are used to create a Continuous Improvement Plan. The CIP lists opportunities for improvement, establishes metrics for success as well as goals and timelines for addressing each element, specifies actions for achieving those goals, and gauges progress. The first CIP, for exposure assessment, was released last year. You can read more about it in The Synergist.
ESSENTIAL WORK
The development of occupational exposure limits has always been closely linked to industrial hygiene. For this reason, it is fitting that the work of the OEL Committee is being conducted under the auspices of the AIHA Guideline Foundation. To learn more about OELs, ERPGs, PGPs, and other Guideline Foundation projects, visit the Foundation's website and access its new strategic plan as a PDF.