Development and Initial Experience with the New "Exposure Database of the Federal States"

The Workgroup of the State Measuring Authorities for Chemical Occupational Safety (ALMA) was established in 1987 by the State Committee for Occupational Safety and Safety Technology (LASI) for the purpose of exchanging experiences between the measuring institutes and authorities of the federal states supporting the commercial regulation authorities in the field of dangerous materials. A workgroup was assigned by ALMA in 1995 to determine the theoretical and practical basis for the establishment of an exposure database commonly available to the federal states. ( 1 ) In the first stage, the theoretical data structure of the planned database was defined. The purpose of this was to ensure the exchange of exposure data between the federal states in the future and to allow common evaluation of the data. In the second stage, the practical benefits of the database were determined in a trial run. This database makes possible and simplifies the documentation of both the exposure measurements of the state measuring authorities and also those of external (private) measuring bodies.