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industries may not require all of these attributes. Industries with highly distributed work sites, like oil & gas pipeline transmission, typically don’t need to assign a location to their SEGs. ThThe potential for exposure to noise and benzene during this task is consistent regardless of their location, so it is not specifified. ThThis will save you from having to perform air monitoring at every location where the operators perform blowdown procedures on the pipeline, and can help minimize the number of SEGs you ultimately need to create.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the number of potential SEGs at your facility, you can break it up into different phases. A common approach is to start with full shift exposures (i.e., no tasks—all full shift TWAs), then identify the task, then maintenance activities. I have seen companies take this approach until they are confident they have appropriately assessed the full shift exposures. In reality, it may take a year or two to expand the scope of your SEGs to include tasks and maintenance activities.
Again, the most important step is to just begin this process, and continuously improve your SEGs over time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a highly effective IH program.
AIHA provides downloadable spreadsheets1 that can help documenting the SEGs.
Documenting & Adjusting SEGs
At this point, you’re probably wondering how best to document
and keep your SEGs up-to-date. For decades, IH professionals have been forced to rely on a patchwork of paper records and spreadsheets to get the job done, all the while struggling to overcome the limitations of these systems—limitations that preclude the kind of visibility, communication and continuity necessary to optimize IH program performance for the long-run.
Today’s IH professionals have it much easier with the availability of purpose-built software solutions designed and built by IH professionals to eliminate those limitations and manage SEGs and other IH program functions in the most efficient ways possible. SEGs are just one of the many moving parts that make up an effective IH program. Your QEAs, sampling plans, lab analysis, data analytics and reporting systems, medical surveillance and program evaluation processes should be carefully coordinated to ensure optimum IH program performance.
Dave Risi, CIH, CSP is a Principal Solutions Strategist, Industrial Hygiene at VelocityEHS, the global leader in cloud environment, health, safety (EHS) and sustainability software. Learn more at www. EHS.com.
REFERENCE
1. https://www.aiha.org/public-resources/consumer-resources/topics-of- interest/ih-apps-tools
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