Today's industrial hygiene professional copes with a myriad of issues. Asbestos, ergonomics, gas and vapor exposure, heat stress, indoor air quality and the environment are just a sampling of the topics that industrial hygienists delve into every day. Add to all of these the current need to understand the aspects of chemical and bioterrorism issues, and the requirements for good data and accurate information have grown tremendously.
In at least one area, gas and vapor detection, the number of hygienists and safety officers actually acquiring, accumulating and using the data and information available to them seems surprisingly slim. Historically, only ten percent of the portable gas-monitoring instruments sold in the industrial marketplace contain data recording capability. In the vast majority of cases, the instruments that are passed out to workers to protect them from potential atmospheric hazards on a daily basis are used only to provide an immediate safety blanket. A worker can become ill - or worse, fatally injured - and there is no evidentiary data available to prove or disprove the circumstances of the incident.