Occupational Hygiene to Industrial Hygiene

A large corporation had a longstanding practice of collecting samples to measure employee exposure to chemicals at each of its more than 50 locations. Prior to Ramboll’s involvement, sampling had been repeated each year without regard to changes in operation, work practice or analysis of previous results.

Ramboll partnered with the company to develop a risk assessment process. The process identified locations and tasks with potential health risks to employees from exposures in the workplace and prioritized those for sampling.

A database tool was developed to analyze and manage the data. This approach allowed for identification of sources, employee tasks and work practices that contributed most to employee exposures.

Information from this approach was used to develop controls targeted to provide the most substantial reduction in risk.

As a result, the corporation has an efficient industrial hygiene program that better protects employee health and avoids the cost of annual sampling that did not provide actionable information.