A New Paradigm for Workplace Air Sampling and Cost-Effective Exposure Assessment

工作场所空气采样和经济高效的暴露评估的新范例

• 批准号: 9293139
• 负责人: Charles S Henry
• 金额: $ 50.38万
• 依托单位: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9293139
• 关键词: New; Paradigm; Workplace; Air; Sampling

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Airborne chemical and biological hazards contribute substantially to our nation's occupational disease burden. And yet, the resources needed to monitor workforce exposure to these hazards are scarce. Ironically, while the cost of healthcare (and worker's compensation) is on the rise, both private and federal investment in industrial hygiene and workforce protection is on the decline. In the absence of (and bleak outlook for) renewed funding to ensure worker health, our field must strive to become dramatically more effective in light of diminishing resources. Therefore, a need exists to improve the efficiency, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness of workplace hazard surveillance. This project will develop and synergize innovative technologies to address that need. This project aims to advance the state-of-the-art in aerosol exposure measurement. Our field has relied for too long on an outdated, inefficient, and expensive paradigm that often leads to inadequate hazard surveillance. Our overarching hypothesis is that the high cost of air sampling/analysis is a limiting factor in our ability to protect worker health. These costs (literally hundreds of dollarsper measurement) preclude day-to-day industrial hygiene efforts, they limit regulatory enforcement, and they stifle the development of credible epidemiology; the latter, in turn, hinders our ability o develop new exposure guidelines (and interventions) that protect worker health. The objective of this work, therefore, is to develop personal air sampling and analysis technologies (pump, sampler, and in-field chemical assays) so that workplace air monitoring can become more cost-effective, timely, and representative. This research will develop technology that reduces the cost of workplace air monitoring by over an order of magnitude and the time from sampling to hazard communication from weeks to hours. As a result, this project has the potential to break a long-held paradigm of inefficient and expensive hazard surveillance. By enabling more efficient, low-cost monitoring, these technologies will allow occupational health researchers to survey hazards (and prevent disease) on a wider scale and across virtually every NORA sector. In the developing world, this technology could empower a rebirth of industrial hygiene in many developing (and very unsafe) industrial sectors.

 描述（由申请人提供）：空气中的化学和生物危害大大有助于我们国家的职业病负担。然而，监测劳动力暴露于这些危害所需的资源却很稀缺。具有讽刺意味的是，虽然医疗保健（和工人的赔偿）成本在上升，但私人和联邦在工业卫生和劳动力保护方面的投资却在下降。在缺乏（和暗淡的前景）新的资金，以确保工人的健康，我们的领域必须努力成为显着更有效的鉴于资源减少。因此，需要提高工作场所危害监测的效率、及时性和成本效益。该项目将开发和协同创新技术，以满足这一需求。该项目旨在推进气溶胶暴露测量的最新技术。我们的领域长期以来一直依赖于一种过时、低效和昂贵的范式，这种范式往往导致危险监测不足。我们的首要假设是，空气采样/分析的高成本是我们保护工人健康能力的限制因素。这些成本（实际上是数百美元的测量值）排除了日常的工业卫生工作，它们限制了监管执法，并扼杀了可信的流行病学的发展;后者反过来又阻碍了我们制定保护工人健康的新暴露指南（和干预措施）的能力。因此，这项工作的目标是开发个人空气采样和分析技术（泵、采样器和现场化学分析），以便工作场所空气监测更具成本效益、及时性和代表性。这项研究将开发技术，将工作场所空气监测的成本降低一个数量级以上，并将从采样到危险通报的时间从数周缩短到数小时。因此，该项目有可能打破长期以来低效和昂贵的危险监测模式。通过实现更有效、低成本的监测，这些技术将使职业健康研究人员能够在更大范围内和几乎所有诺拉部门调查危害（并预防疾病）。在发展中国家，这项技术可以使许多发展中（和非常不安全的）工业部门的工业卫生重生。