Past and Current Approaches to Occupational Exposure Databases in the Private Sector

Abstract

Abstract Occupational exposure databases provide essential information for industrial hygiene, occupational medicine, epidemiology, regulators, labor, operating management, engineering, and other users. The diverse uses include occupational health program planning, epidemiology research, risk assessment, risk management, and compliance review. For these multiple uses, exposure measurements in the database are often linked with other data, including work histories, job/task descriptions, hazard inventories, engineering and production records, medical records, health status information, and possibly lifestyle factors such as hobbies. Occupational exposure database approaches that consider needs for little information beyond the exposure measurements may not satisfy all the possible users. The objective of this article is a general review of past and current experiences with occupational exposure databases in the private sector. Past purposes for collecting data and the expectations for their future use affe...