Quantitative Exposure Assessment Professional Judgment Validation Study

Abstract

Professional judgement is a key element of an exposure assessment program. Industrial hygienists frequently rely on it to make judgements about the acceptability of occupational exposures to chemical, biological, and physical agents. Often this must be done with little or no quantitative sampling data. This is especially true in the case of research and development, where activities may be short duration and non-routine. In this situation there are very limited opportunities for sampling, and therefore, professional judgement becomes a major tool industrial hygienists rely upon. One of the limitations of professional judgement is that exposures may be misclassified. That is, an exposure deemed to be unacceptable may in fact be acceptable and unnecessary effort and expense may be incurred as a result. On the other hand, an exposure may be judged acceptable when it is in fact unacceptable, resulting in an overexposure and potential injury or illness. It is therefore crucial that professional judgement be validated. In this study we evaluated 106 acceptable exposure determinations with retrospective quantitative exposure monitoring to validate the performance of Sandia National Laboratory industrial hygienists at performing exposure determinations with professional judgement.