Some Thoughts about Industrial Hygiene Sampling Strategies Long-Term Average Exposures, and Daily Exposures.

摘要

This paper expands upon the concept of comparing decision criteria by comparing their decision probabilities in representative workplaces. Earlier results are reviewed to show the existence of workplaces which are likely to be declared acceptable by the legal action level criteria, but are nevertheless subject to citations from conscientious compliance officers. The earlier work introduced a new term; the Average Exposure Limit (AEL). The AEL was defined as a boundary for separating the probably acceptable workplaces from those which are clearly unacceptable. In this paper, the AEL is reinterpreted as a standard against which one evaluates long-term average exposure, making it somewhat analogous to the Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) against which one evaluates daily exposures. By properly selecting the relationship between the AEL and an existing PEL, it may be possible to create an easil;y interpreted standard which could be used to support the National Academy of Science Emergency Exposure Limits (EEL) and to provide guidance to professional industrial hygienists in place of the now discarded American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) excursion factors. This possibility will be emphasized by charts showing the fraction of daily exposures which are allowed to exceed the PEL as a function of the value chosen for the AEL.