A recent study indicates that traditional methods for assessing worker exposure to hazards, which often rely on professional opinion and experience, may underestimate risks to workers. To better protect workers and communities, leading occupational and environmental health and safety (OEHS) professionals are advocating for advanced risk-assessment techniques that incorporate statistical tools and other approaches into their daily practices through the new “Improving Exposure Judgments” initiative.

Created by AIHA — the association for scientists and professionals committed to preserving and ensuring occupational and environmental health and safety — and ACGIH (American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists), this multi-faceted initiative includes free, comprehensive tools and resources that will help better protect workers and communities from hazards.

"Many workplace environments contain hazardous materials that pose serious risks to workers and can lead to long-term health issues. OEHS professionals have an ethical duty to capture the most accurate exposure data possible," said AIHA CEO, Lawrence Sloan. "The Improving Exposure Judgment tools and resources are designed to enhance OEHS professionals’ skills, contributing to safer workplaces and healthier communities."

According to a recent AIHA survey, most OEHS professionals think they do not have enough measurements above the limit of detection to use statistical tools to characterize exposure risks. However, statistical tools for assessing risk can analyze data sets with sample sizes as low as one.

"Early in my career, I was aware of systematic approaches and statistical tools but wasn’t using them, as they weren’t available in the organizations I worked for," said Brent Altemose, PhD, CIH, CSP, member of AIHA’s Improving Exposure Judgment Advisory Group. "My ‘aha’ moment came when I kept returning to the same plant year after year, collecting samples and making decisions based on them—only to find I'd made some wrong choices. I was overconfident in my judgment and hadn’t adopted a truly systematic approach. This experience was eye-opening."

AIHA’s Improving Exposure Judgment resources are available for free on its online portal and include videos, apps, and online courses that allow users the flexibility to incorporate them into practice on their own time. For example, video courses can be completed on the users’ own schedule to acquire and apply new skills, and software tools can be downloaded and used to accurately evaluate exposure profiles in the field. The wide-ranging benefits of these new resources include:

• Better protection of workers and communities through improved judgments that lead to safer workplaces.
• Increased confidence in personal judgments with verifiable data analysis to inform and validate users’ assessments.
• Stronger communication with colleagues and clients.
• Greater efficiencies in assessing risk via tools that require less time and money and fewer samples than one might expect.

While OEHS professionals have busy, demanding careers that often make learning new skills and putting them into practice time consuming, AIHA stresses that these new tools can save time for users in the long run—particularly when it comes to using statistical tools to improve judgments. In addition, users have free access to the software tools that can be used to characterize exposures, allowing OEHS professionals to enter data points and get the output needed to make informed risk decisions in a matter of minutes.

“I’m really excited about how we can potentially use exposure models more proactively in our practice,” said Stephanie Battista, MS, CIH, CSP, AIHA Improving Exposure Judgment Advisory Group member. “It’s up to us to continue to ask questions, develop professional skills, and test these new tools to see how they can be really useful in our workplaces.”