The role of control technologies in preventing occupational disease.

Abstract

There has been little past emphasis on determining the impact of control technologies on health. Compliance with legally mandated standards has received the greatest emphasis, certainly since passage of the OSHA of 1970. Risk assessment focuses on needed data to estimate risk and can be used for estimates of workplace impacts before and after adoption of control technologies. Two possible approaches to workplace improvements are suggested for estimating impacts on worker health. Persons removed from risk can be used where workers' exposures to hazardous agents are reduced from above to below a TLV. Second, for carcinogens the percent reduction in exposure can be used as a surrogate for reduction in future cancer incidence. Both measures suffer from a host of assumptions required by the user. There may be better measures for estimating today the reductions in chronic disease which control technologies will bring about. These measures are desperately needed to establish priorities and to guide installation of control technologies. Finally, research in control technologies is needed to improve effectiveness and to lower costs. However, it is widely accepted by engineers in this field that while improved methods are always welcome, current available technologies are under-utilized in practice.