Throughout my career as an industrial hygienist, I've often been asked, "What is in an industrial hygiene (IH) report?" The details of IH reports are technical and serve specific purposes in ensuring you can protect the health of employees. In this article, I will provide a description of the information that should be contained in an IH report and how you can use it to create a safe and healthy working environment.
IH surveys are conducted to accurately assess personnel's exposure to chemical, physical and biological agents in the workplace; provide recommendations for their reduction or elimination; and recommend enrollment in specific medical surveillance programs. There are three types of IH reports or surveys: baseline, regulatory compliance and supplemental.
Baseline IH surveys are conducted at the very beginning of the production process to identify and quantify all potential workplace exposures to chemical, physical and biological agents. The findings highlight what additional controls should be implemented to mitigate health hazards.
A regulatory compliance report is conducted more frequently and determined by regulations for the occupational exposure data collected during the baseline IH survey. Typical exposures sampled are noise, respirable dust, welding fumes, and specific chemicals used during work activities or as part of the production process. The sampling is conducted to verify if concentrations are above their respective occupational exposure limits.
Specialty supplemental reports are used to provide new information to the baseline survey to quantify specific new hazards associated with new processes, equipment or chemical products, or determine if there are increases in frequency of a previously assessed work task. Examples can be lighting surveys, noise mapping, ergonomic surveys or chemical product evaluations with exposure sampling.
All reports should contain the usual executive summary and conclusions, but the following sections should not be overlooked:
- The Workplace Observation section explores the production process, various tasks conducted and their frequency, and employee breakdown by task. This enables the identification of potential occupational health hazards in the workplace.
- The Health Hazard section identifies all occupational health hazards that the report will quantify and provides a discussion of the short- and long-term exposure symptoms and specific illnesses that can materialize if controls do not mitigate exposure levels within regulatory requirements.
- The Sampling Methodology section discusses the scientific sampling and analysis method used to collect the exposure data. All sampling equipment should be listed in this section along with any limitations in the method that could impact sample results.
- The Sampling Results section presents a detailed discussion of the findings compared to regulatory requirements. All observed hazard controls should be discussed specifically in how they reduced the exposure level. This section should also contain a data table, all equations used for calculations and a risk matrix identifying the potential health hazards.
- The Hazard Mitigation Recommendation section includes hazard control and training best practice recommendations and safety program implementation improvement opportunities.
- The Supporting Sampling Documentation section is particularly important to regulatory auditors and lawsuit litigators who use this section to prove or disprove the validity of the report. This section should contain the field sampling forms; the laboratory analysis report; and specific equipment information such as the serial number, field calibration information, collection media sample number and factory calibration certification.
It can be daunting to be handed a 100- page IH report and filter through the technical language. But the surveys are used to identify possible risks to workers' health and the need for further evaluation and testing to determine if there are risks of overexposure or regulatory compliance issues, or if additional administrative or engineering controls are needed. The ultimate goal is to ensure the health and protection of employees.
For more information, email brent.levingston@onesourceehs.com or call (225) 450-9265.
