EDUCATION

Design of measurement strategies for workplace exposures

Hans Kromhout

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr H Kromhout, Environmental and Occupational Health Division, Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, University of Utrecht, PO Box 80176, Yalelaan 2, 3508 TD Utrecht, The Netherlands;
H.Kromhout@iras.uu.nl

Keywords: measurement strategies; workplace exposures

Measurement strategies for hazard control will have to be efficient and effective to protect a worker's health and well being. No measurement strategy for hazard control will ever be cost efficient in the short run when it is compared with the promises of tools such as the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) essentials (box 1): "a simple system of generic risk assessments which leads to the selection of an appropriate control approach".¹ Going straight to benchmark standards without the need of exposure measurements will certainly eliminate the cost of measurements. However, generic risk assessment tools like COSHH essentials and expert systems like the Estimation and Assessment of Substances Exposure (EASE)² (box 2), as well as expert judgement by an occupational hygienist, are known to be inaccurate and they do not take into account the various components of variability in exposure levels (box 3). In fig . . . [Full text of this article]

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Comments on article by Kromhout

Michael Topping

Occup Environ Med Online, 30 Jul 2002 [Full text]

"Where there is no expert": author's response to the letter by Dr Topping

Hans Kromhout

Occup Environ Med Online, 7 Aug 2002 [Full text]