Industrial Hygiene Principles in Malaysia

• This section covers the basic principles of industrial hygiene, including its development, definitions, and core principles.

Development of Industrial Hygiene in Malaysia

• Industrial Hygiene activities in Malaysia started in the 1970s.
• DOSH (Department of Occupational Safety and Health) began conducting factory inspections to find health hazards.
• Two regulations related to Industrial Hygiene were gazetted under OSHA 1994:
• Occupational safety & health (noise exposure) regulation 2019.
• Occupational safety & health (use of standard exposure chemical hazardous to health) regulation 2000.
• Four regulations linked to Industrial Hygiene were gazetted under the Factories and Machinery Act (FMA) 1967:
• Factories and machinery (safety, health & welfare) regulation 1970.
• Factories and machinery (Leads) regulation 1984.
• Factories and machinery (Asbestos) regulation 1986.
• Factories and machinery (Mineral dust) regulation 1989.
• An industry code of practice exists for safe working in a confined space, established in 2010.

Role of Industrial Hygiene Practitioners

• Practitioners aim to prevent exposure to health hazards and control health risks in the workplace.
• They address problems at their source, identifying hazards, methods of contact, and ways to minimize or prevent exposure.

Definition of Industrial Hygiene (AIHA)

• The American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) defines industrial hygiene as "science and art" dedicated to anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of environmental factors and stresses in the workplace.
• These factors and stresses may cause sickness, impaired health, or discomfort among workers or community members.

Definition of Industrial Hygiene (IOHA)

• The International Occupational Hygiene Association (IOHA) defines occupational hygiene as the discipline of anticipating, recognizing, evaluating, and controlling health hazards in the environment.
• This aims to protect worker health, well-being, and the safety of the broader community.

Principle of Industrial Hygiene

• There are four core principles:
• Anticipation of hazard.
• Hazard Identification (Recognition).
• Risk Assessment (Evaluation).
• Risk Control.
• These principles address chemical, physical, and biological agents from work.
• The objective is prevent or reduce health risks.
• Anticipation involves predicting potential hazards, ideally during the design or formulation stage of processes, equipment, or substances to eliminate the need for costly redesigns.
• Hazard identification can be achieved through workplace inspections, medical surveillance, area monitoring, accident reviews, discussions with management, factory layout analysis, workflow descriptions, and information from safety data sheets.

Risk Assessment

• It involves understanding the characteristics of exposure:
• Who is exposed.
• How many people are exposed.
• What they're exposed to.
• How they are exposed (inhalation, ingestion, skin absorption).
• Risk Assessment includes considering:
• Frequency.
• Intensity.
• Duration of exposure.
• Two approaches for risk assessment:
• Quantitative: using equipment to measure exposure intensity or magnitude.
• Qualitative: using observation and professional opinion.

Examples of risk assessment

• Dust and Smoke Sampling: focus is on respirable dust (less than 10 micrometers in diameter, can adversely affect the lungs) and inhalable dust (up to 100 micrometers, impacts the systemic and respiratory systems).
• Gas and vapor sampling: entails identifying gases and vapors that are easily inhaled and using measures such as reagents, containers, and direct-reading equipment and integrated sampling equipment.
• Measurements are taken at various locations.

Risk Mapping

Includes identifying:

• Noisy zones.
• Noise contours.
• Measurement of worker exposure.

Measuring Noise and Heat Stress

• This involves measuring noise levels and performing noise sampling using sound level meters.
• Heat Stress: this involves measurement of conditions at various identified locations in the workplace and measurements at the location of work.
• Quantitative Assessment (sampling Technique): Personal Sampling requires equipment to measure exposure at the worker's breathing zone.
• Area Sampling involves putting equipment at identified locations in the workplace

Risk Conclusion

• A risk conclusion is reached all evaluation steps are done.
• Considerations are:
  • Level of risk exposure (low, medium, high), this must be within accepted Permissible exposure limit (PEL).
  • Assesssments are based on both qualitative &quantitative evaluations.
  • Adequacy of current control measure.

Risk Control Priorities

• Implementing control measures at the source, not the worker.
• Aiming for the elimination of the hazard.
• Ensuring controls are below the target exposure limits (PEL).
• Lowering control as much as is reasonably practicable, especially with limited PEL data.

Other Control Measures

• This includes:
• Providing information, orders, and training.
• Conducting exposure monitoring.
• Implementing health surveillance.
• Providing first aid and emergency facilities.
• Using warning signage.