The Role of BOHS
BOHS is in an excellent position to reach other Occupational Hygiene Associations and Societies throughout Europe and also to involve practicing hygienists and alert them to developments. In addition, it is well placed to inform policy makers about existing, successful approaches to exposure control. As such, we are playing an important role in coordinating activity amongst the EU Occupational Hygiene community, assisting the development of implementation guidance and ensuring practising hygienists are fully informed and engaged, and able to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the introduction of the REACH legislation, to help facilitate its implementation.
Collection of exposure data to support the development of the Advanced REACH Tool (ART)
REACH will soon be moving into the high volume and registration phase of high priority agents (Carcinogenic, Mutagenic or Reprotoxic substances). This will raise for the first time real questions about occupational hygiene practices, exposure levels and control measures.
To date only Tier 1 exposure models, such as the EASE model, are available which generally provide precautionary assessments, but do not provide results with sufficient discrimination, especially if DNELs are set very low. An advanced exposure assessment tool is currently being developed by a consortium of European research organisations. The Advanced REACH Tool (ART) is a Tier 2 model that offers the prospect of producing more precise and accurate estimation of exposure for use in REACH. A working version of the model will be available by September 2009.
The ART Model
The ART is based on a deterministic model to produce an initial estimate of exposure for a scenario (the prior), a database holding relevant exposure data and a “similarity algorithm” to identify data relevant to the scenario. The data and the prior are then combined together using a Bayesian statistical methodology to produce a final exposure estimate (the posterior). The estimate will be presented to the user in terms of a number of parameters from the exposure distribution (e.g. median and upper percentile).
The conceptual model for ART has been developed and the basis for the actual deterministic part of the tool has been sent to a number of leading exposure scientists for peer-review. Details of other parts of the model are currently being finalised. However, the deterministic model will need to be calibrated against real high quality exposure data from well-documented exposure scenarios. BOHS is to help facilitate the collection of high quality exposure data for a number of scenarios to aid the calibration of the mechanistic model of ART. We will also provide guidance on the coding of the various items of contextual information.
The procedure
BOHS will facilitate the collation of exposure data and associated contextual information from members. The work is being coordinated by the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM), who are one of the members of the ART consortium.
IOM will make contact with all of the organisations listed in the BOHS Directory of Consultants and any other individuals or organisations suggested by BOHS to request their assistance in obtaining and providing personal occupational exposure data and supporting contextual information from exposure scenarios. Please contact the IOM directly if you are interested in taking part in this exercise.
The work will be managed by Dr Martie van Tongeren at the IOM and coordination of the data collection will be undertaken by the IOM’s Information Scientist, Ken Dixon. A small BOHS Steering Group will be overseeing the work. The project will be completed by 31st May 2009.
Report on the work
It is proposed that BOHS and the ART consortium would jointly publish a report on the work and present it at the two-day REACH meeting in Brussels.
The completed dataset will be used for the calibration of the mechanistic model of the ART to be undertaken by the ART consortium and will eventually be uploaded into the ART database. The anonymised dataset will be the property of the ART consortium, but BOHS will have the right to use the data for other purposes at no additional cost.
This is a fantastic opportunity for BOHS to be at the vanguard of REACH developments generally and in exposure assessment specifically, and to harness the expertise and experience of our members to demonstrate the importance and relevance of occupational hygiene to the progress of REACH.
If anyone is interested in taking part, or for further discussion about the requirements, please contact either Ken Dixon or Martie van Tongeren from the IOM project team in the first instance:
ken.dixon@iom-world.org
martie.van.tongeren@iom-world.org
What else have we done?
We have a REACH Steering Group which has planned and managed our activities so far: two open technical seminars, 'How to REACH 2007' and 'REACH Beyond 2007' ; a presentation on 'REACH and Occupational Hygiene' which has been used at exhibitions and conferences, and workshop sessions at both our 2007 and 2008 Annual Conferences.
A number of articles have been written/commissioned by members of the Steering Group, which have been published in our Newsletter and other journals.
And the Steering Group has published a position statement on the COSHH vs. REACH interface.
And what next?
A session at the 2009 Annual Conference in Eastbourne, 28 - 30 April, providing a technical update on REACH.
A second European Conference and Workshop in Brussels, 30 September - 1/ October.