Industrial Hygiene Simplified: A Guide to Anticipation, Recognition, Evaluation, and Control of Workplace Hazards

369 Pages·2006·1.07 MB·English

by  Frank R. Spellman

Industrial Hygiene
Simplified: A Guide to
Anticipation, Recognition,
Evaluation, and Control of
Workplace Hazards
Frank R. Spellman
Government Institutes
Industrial Hygiene
Simplified
A Guide to Anticipation,
Recognition, Evaluation,
and Control of Workplace Hazards
FRANK R. SPELLMAN
Government Institutes
An imprint of
The Scarecrow Press,Inc.
Lanham,Maryland • Toronto • Oxford
2006
Published in the United States ofAmerica
by Government Institutes,an imprint ofThe Scarecrow Press,Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of
The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group,Inc.
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Copyright © 2006 by Government Institutes
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted in any
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The reader should not rely on this publication to address specific questions that apply to a particular set of facts.The
author and the publisher make no representation or warranty,express or implied,as to the completeness,correctness,or
utility ofthe information in this publication.In addition,the author and the publisher assume no liability ofany kind
whatsoever resulting from the use ofor reliance upon the contents ofthis book.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spellman,Frank R.
Industrial hygiene simplified :a guide to anticipation,recognition,evaluation,and control ofworkplace hazards /
Frank R.Spellman.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13:978-0-86587-019-2 (pbk.:alk.paper)
ISBN-10:0-86587-019-5 (pbk.:alk.paper)
1. Industrial hygiene. 2.Industrial safety.
[DNLM: 1. Occupational Health. 2.Environmental Health. 3. Safety Management. 4. Workplace—
organization & administration. WA 400 S743i 2006] I.Government Institutes. II.Title.
RC967.S64 2006
616.9'803—dc22 2005029817
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials,ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica.
Contents
Preface v
1 What Is Industrial Hygiene? 1
2 Industrial Hygiene/Safety Terminology 25
3 Hazard Communication,Occupational Environmental Limits,
and Air Monitoring and Sampling 49
4 Indoor Air Quality and Mold Control 93
5 Noise and Vibration 125
6 Radiation 159
7 Thermal Stress 177
8 Ventilation 197
9 Personal Protective Equipment 223
10 Toxicology:Biological and Chemical Hazards 265
11 Ergonomics 305
12 Engineering Design and Controls 339
Index 349
About the Author 357

Preface
The field of industrial hygiene has undergone significant change over the past three
decades.There are many reasons for this.Some of the more prominent include the follow-
ing:technological changes that have introduced new hazards in the workplace;proliferation
of health and safety legislation and corresponding regulations; increased pressure from
assertive regulatory agencies; realization by industrial executives that a safe and healthy
workplace is typically a more productive and litigious-free workplace;skyrocketing health
care and workers’compensation costs;increased pressure from environmental groups and
the public;a growing interest in ethics and corporate responsibility;and professionalization
of industrial hygiene practitioners.
All of these factors, when taken together, have made the job of the modern industrial
hygienist more challenging and more important than it has ever been. These factors have
also created a need for an up-to-date,condensed and concise,plain English,user-friendly
book in industrial hygiene that contains the latest information needed by people who will
practice this profession in the age of high technology and escalating on-the-job injuries
with accompanying increased health care costs.
This book was written in response to the need for a hands-on, practical resource that
focuses on the needs of modern industrial hygiene practice. It is intended for in-field use
and for corporate training settings.Industrial Hygiene Simplified is valuable and accessible
for use by those involved in such disciplines as industrial technology,manufacturing tech-
nology, industrial engineering, engineering technology, occupation safety, management,
and supervision.This book is ideal for those needing a refresher on industrial hygiene con-
cepts and practices they may not use regularly,as well as those practitioners preparing for
v
vi PREFACE
the Certified Industrial Hygiene (CIH) exam. The direct, straightforward presentation of
material focuses on making the theories and principles of industrial hygiene practical and
useful in a real-world setting.
Frank R.Spellman
Norfolk,Virginia
1
What Is Industrial Hygiene?
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), industrial
hygiene is the science of anticipating, recognizing, evaluating, and controlling workplace
conditions that may cause worker injury or illness.Industrial hygienists use environmental
monitoring and analytical methods to detect the extent ofworker exposure.They also eval-
uate employee engineering, administrative controls, and other methods, such as personal
protective equipment (PPE),designed to control or guard against potential health hazards
in the workplace (OSHA,1998).
Do you remember 9/11? How about the post office anthrax mess? Dumb questions,
right? The proper question should be: How can we ever forget? It started with the word
being passed around about airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers. News coverage was
everywhere. Remember those TV shots with the planes crashing; the towers falling? Over
and over again those shots were replayed, etched into our human memory chips. We
watched mesmerized; like fire watchers or falling water gazers, hypnotized. We literally
could not believe what our eyes were seeing.
Later, during the frantic hunt for survivors, TV coverage continued. We saw the brave
police-, fire-, and emergency-responders doing what they do best—rescuing survivors. We
saw construction workers and unidentified others climbing over and crawling through the
tangled, smoking mess, helping where they could.We saw others too. For instance, do you
recall seeing folks walking around in what looked like space suits,instruments in hand? The
average TV viewer, watching these space-suited people moving cautiously and deliberately
through the smoking mass of death and destruction,had no idea who those dedicated pro-
fessionals were. Professionals doing what they do best; monitoring and testing the area to
make sure it was safe for the responders and everyone else.For example,ensuring it was safe
for a president,arm around a hero,who stood there on the rubble in the smoldering mess and
1
2 CHAPTER 1
spoke those resolute words we all needed to hear;words the terrorists needed to hear;words
they are still hearing.
Who were those space-suited individuals who not only appeared on our TV screens dur-
ing the aftermath of 9/11 but were also prominent figures in footage of post offices trashed
by anthrax?
They were the industrial hygienists.
Terrorism and bioterrorism might be new buzzwords in the American vernacular, but
responding to hazard sites is nothing new to those space-suited folks whom most people,in
regards to profession,can’t even identify.
Times have changed, but the need for fully-trained professional industrial hygienists
has not.
Is the industrial hygienist also a safety professional?
It depends.The safety profession and industrial hygiene have commonly been thought of
as separate entities (this is especially the view taken by many safety professionals and indus-
trial hygienists).In fact,over the years,a considerable amount of debate and argument has
risen between those in the safety and industrial hygiene professions on many areas con-
cerning safety and health issues in the workplace—and on exactly who is best qualified to
administer a workplace safety program.
Historically,the safety professional had the upper hand in this argument—that is,prior
to the enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act),which mandated
formation of an administrative entity, OSHA. Until OSHA went into effect, industrial
hygiene was not a topic that many professionals thought about, cared about, or had any
understanding of.Safety was safety—and job safety included health protection—and that
was that.
After the OSH Act,however,things changed,and so did perceptions.In particular,peo-
ple began to look at work injuries and work-related illnesses differently. In the past, they
were regarded as separate problems.
Why?
The primary reason for this view was obvious—and not so obvious.Obvious was work-
related injury. Work injures occurred suddenly and their agent (i.e., the electrical source,
chemical, machine, tool, work or walking surface, or whatever unsafe element caused the
injury) was readily obvious.
Not so obvious were the workplace agents (occupational hazardous substances;e.g.,lead,
asbestos,formaldehyde,etc.) that caused work-related illnesses.Again,why not so obvious?
Because most occupational illnesses/diseases develop rather slowly, over time. In asbestos
exposure,for example,workers who abate (remove) asbestos-containing materials without
WHAT IS INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE? 3
the proper training (awareness) and PPE are subject to exposure.Typically,asbestos expo-
sure may be either a one time exposure event (the silver bullet syndrome) or the exposure
may go on for several years. No matter the length of exposure, one thing is certain; with
asbestos contamination,pathological change occurs slowly—some time will pass before the
worker notices a difference in his or her pulmonary function.Disease from asbestos expo-
sure has a latency period that may be as long as 20 to 30 years before the effects are realized
(or diagnosed, in some cases). The point? Any exposure to asbestos, short term or long
term,may eventually lead to a chronic disease (in this case,restrictive lung disease) that is
irreversible (e.g.,asbestosis).Ofcourse,many other types ofworkplace toxic exposures can
affect workers’ health. The prevention, evaluation, and control of such occurrences is the
role of the industrial hygienist.
Thus, because of the OSH Act, and also because of increasing public awareness and
involvement by unions in industrial health matters,the role of the industrial hygienist has
continued to grow over the years. Certain colleges and universities have incorporated
industrial hygiene majors into environmental health programs.
Another result ofthe OSH Act has been,in effect (though many practitioners in the field
disagree with this view),an ongoing tendency toward uniting safety and industrial hygiene
into one entity.
This trend presents a problem with definition.When we combine safety and industrial
hygiene,do we combine them into one specific title or profession? Debate on this question
continues. In attempting to find a solution, we need to consider actual experience gained
from practice in the real world(s) of safety and industrial hygiene.Knowledge about safety
is widespread (often rooted in common sense,which unfortunately is not always so com-
mon),however,the industrial hygiene profession is not as well known.We will take a brief
look at its history to gain understanding.
HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE (OSHA, 1998)
There has been an awareness ofindustrial hygiene since antiquity.The environment and its
relation to worker health was recognized as early as the fourth century BC when Hip-
pocrates noted lead toxicity in the mining industry.In the first century AD,Pliny the-elder,
a Roman scholar,perceived health risks to those working with zinc and sulfur.He devised a
face mask made from an animal bladder to protect workers from exposure to dust and lead
fumes. In the second century AD, the Greek physician, Galen, accurately described the
pathology oflead poisoning and also recognized the hazardous exposures ofcopper miners
to acid mists.