First make sure you read lesson at “3.3 Risk Assessment Process: Steps 2 and 3”.
Taking the data from the above example. Let’s consider a new scenario for a custodian who works at the school. Calculate the asbestos cancer risk of a custodian who works 8 hrs per day for 250 days per year for 30 years at an air level of 0.01 f/ml.
As presented in the video, start with the risk of 1 death @ 0.0004 f/ml per lifetime exposure (i.e. 24/7 for 70 years) and work your way down. Assume everything is a linear response.
(show all work and calculations).
STEP 2
Questions to ask:
Identify WHAT the possible hazards are in each step of the process and overall environment including building infrastructure.
WRITE down all the chemical, biological, physical hazards you see in each step as well as the overall environment.
Observe HOW the moving parts of any machine operates and how someone (ie: worker, homeowner) could come in contact with that machine.
Identify WHO could be harmed by a machine. Identify HOW each worker could be harmed and the injury that could result.
Create a Checklist: To help identify hazards create a checklist of questions that need to be answered or items that need to be analyzed.
For example, Appendices B, C and D in the Food and Drug Administration’s HACCP Principles & Application Guidelines show how one goes about identifying hazards in the food production process.
HACCP Principles & Application Guidelines
Toxic Effects Assignment: Googling the “toxic effects of chemical X” will result in a wide array of health effects. But which one is authoritative? Legally, government published data (i.e. from EPA or CDC) is considered authoritative. Interestingly enough, published adverse health effects articles, whether epidemiologic or toxicologic, are NOT considered authoritative (in the legal sense of the word). The question below is intended to introduce you to the IRIS (Integrated Risk Information System) database produced by US EPA and other governmental sources. It is authoritative.
Visit the US EPA Integrated Risk Information System at https://www.epa.gov/iris and go to “Browse by Organ System”. What organ system has the LEAST amount of environmental agents associated with it?
STEP 3
