Page 14 - OHS, April/May 2025

I N D U S T R I A L H Y G I E N E
Beyond Hard Hats: Integrating Industrial Hygiene into Lone
Worker Safety
Integrating industrial hygiene principles helps protect lone workers by identifying,
evaluating, and controlling unique safety risks.
BY GEN HANDLEY
be traced back thousands of years.
The roots of industrial hygiene can
In ancient Rome, scholar Pliny the
Elder advised miners to wear face
masks, or PPE, made from animal bladders1
,
to protect them from inhaling dangerous
dust while at work. Industrial hygiene has
come a long way since, becoming a highly
specialized, high-tech fi eld.
However, in many ways it has not
changed at all; the same primary objective
exists of protecting workers’ health. Or to
explain more what it entails for workplace
safety, OSHA says industrial hygiene2 is de-
fi ned as the “science and art devoted to the
anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and
control of those environmental factors or
stresses arising in or from the workplace,
which may cause sickness, impaired health
and well-being, or signifi cant discomfort
among workers or among the citizens of the
community.”
While originally developed to protect
people working in industrial environ-
ments, many industrial hygiene fundamen-
tals can be applied to workplace safety in
all industries and environments, particu-
larly for those working alone and in remote
locations. Lone workers face hazards that
employees in teams do not experience, in-
cluding major challenges to accessing help
in emergencies—of maintaining commu-
nication to request that help.
The Four Core Principles
of Industrial Hygiene
As mentioned in OSHA’s defi nition, in-
dustrial hygiene is based around four core
principles that can help people working
alone address challenges to emergency
communications and other lone worker
occupational hazards. Th ese four principles
include anticipation, recognition, evalua-
tion, and control, which provide measures
and protocols that protect the lone worker
through proactivity, prevention, and cus-
tomized controls.
1. Anticipation. Th e most eff ective ap-
proach to success managing occupational
safety hazards is through anticipation and
prevention. Th is requires measures that
can evaluate the work environments of all
safety hazards, allowing lone workers and
employers to assess the dangers that they
are facing.
2. Recognition. Recognizing and un-
derstanding the potential hazards of a work
environment is especially important when
preventing work hazards before somebody
is hurt. Lone workers can be trained to rec-
ognize hazards in the work environments
such as fall dangers by immediately identi-
fying and reporting spills or leaks.
3. Evaluation. Once the potential oc-
cupational hazards have been identifi ed,
their risk levels must be evaluated. Th is can
be accomplished through assessments and
monitoring of the lone workers and their
environments. Th e lone worker’s exposure
Troy V Smith/stock.adobe.com
levels to a specifi c safety hazard must be
measured so that the employer can make an
educated decision if more steps are needed
to protect them.
4. Control. When a hazard is determined
to be high-risk to lone workers, safety mea-
sures and controls can be implemented to
eliminate their exposure or the hazard itself.
Each safety control is specifi c to that occu-
pational hazard as well as the lone worker’s
environment and circumstances. Engineer-
ing controls like guardrails and automated
systems and administrative controls like
safety training and protocols are examples,
as well as PPE and protective gear.
Common Hazards
in Lone Worker Environments
Occupational hazards, particularly for lone
workers who are more vulnerable, can
be categorized into sections that include
chemical (pesticides, benzine, asbestos)
12 Occupational Health & Safety | APRIL/MAY 2025 www.ohsonline.com