Page 27 - Occupational Health & Safety, May 2017

The three tiers of the NIOSH occupational exposure banding process are depicted in this graphic. (NIOSH External Review Draft, page 26)
tion and requires integration of all available data to determine the band assignment.”
Control Banding
The process guides users to identify an ex- posure band from among five categories— bands A to E—of increasing severity to health, where band A is the least severe and band E the most severe.
The document distinguishes the oc- cupational exposure band process from the concept of control banding, saying the OEBs process uses only hazard-based data such as studies on human health effects or toxicology studies to identify an overall level of hazard potential and an associated airborne concentration range for chemicals with similar hazard profiles. Control band- ing, however, essentially link hazards to specific control measures, it explains.
The authors of the document—the ac- knowledgements page credits seven prin- cipal authors and 35 others who provided comments, feedback, internal peer review, etc., and says the guidance document was written by a multidisciplinary team from the NIOSH Education and Information Division—note that the alignment between the exposure bands and current OELs was evaluated in order to build confidence in the occupational exposure banding ap- proach. Analysis of a UK hazard banding scheme found that for 98 percent of the banded chemicals, the target exposure for hazard banding was lower than the OEL. Similarly, NIOSH compared the Tier 1 and Tier 2 banding results for 600 chemicals for which OELs currently exist and found that the overall of Tier 1 bands that were at least as protective as the OEL was 91.5 percent, they reported.
NIOSH’s meeting notice asked stake- holders to place special emphasis on techni- cal review of 11 questions, including these:
■ If a chemical can cause an immedi- ate effect (necrosis, sensitization, pulmo-
nary edema, central nervous system (CNS) effects), should there be special guidelines for assigning a short term OEB or em- phasizing the importance of keeping even short duration exposures below the OEB for those types of toxicants?
■ If a skin toxicant is a corrosive, ir- ritant, or sensitizer, should there be any special designation assigned along with the occupational exposure band (OEB)? Ad- ditionally, please comment on the utility of using skin and eye effects to create inhala- tion based bands.
■ The comparison of Tier 1 and Tier 2 results for a set of chemicals showed that Tier 1 and Tier 2 produce the same band for 65% of the chemicals tested. Tier 1 is more protective for 17.5% of the chemicals, while Tier 2 is more protective for 17.5% of the chemicals. NIOSH currently recommends that both the tier 1 and tier 2 process be completed for a particular chemical. Do
REFERENCES
you agree with this recommendation? If not, what approach should NIOSH take?
■ How should NIOSH consider data collected on structural analogs or related chemicals in the banding scheme?
■ Acute toxicity information may be presented in an array of different units. We have attempted to address those possi- bilities in the banding criteria for the acute toxicity endpoint, especially for inhalation exposures. Is this information sufficiently clear? Are suitable rubrics for unit conver- sions provided?
■ Does this draft document adequate- ly describe the occupational exposure banding process in a way that supports its use in assigning ranges of exposure con- centrations to protect worker health in the occupational setting?
Jerry Laws is the editor of Occupational Health & Safety magazine.
www.ohsonline.com
1. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/03/15/2017-05115/draft-current-intelligence- bulletin-the-occupational-exposure-banding-process-guidance-for-the
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