Industrial Hygiene in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Abstract

Industrial hygiene professionals and other pharmaceutical industry occupational health specialists have acknowledged that occupational exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) may cause unintended health impacts in the handling of these drugs by employees. In an industrial setting, where a worker offers a route of exposure to a powerful chemical compound, there is a high likelihood or risk that the compound will produce the designed response. Industrial hygiene offers needed policies to prevent occupational exposure to powerful compounds and elements of a good powerful safety program for compounds. Industrial hygiene is all about anticipating and assessing the hazards of powerful compounds; determining which of the procedures present the greatest risks; assessing the risks; and controlling future occupational exposures mainly through engineering and administrative systems. It basically deals with assessing the hazards of current or new compounds, conducting risk assessments on all prospective exposures to risks, assessing future exposures, carrying out risk assessments and controlling steps to prevent risks, accidents and sensitive events in the workplace fields. To prevent exposure to powerful chemical compounds, all safety precautions should be introduced and failure of control exposures to powerful compounds may result in expensive program mistakes, delayed manufacturing schedules and possibly dangerous exposures to industrial employees.