Advancing the Mission: Occupational and Environmental Hygiene in the Information Age

Abstract

This Henry F. Smyth, Jr. lecture recalls the pioneering efforts that Dr. Smyth made in fostering professionalism in industrial hygiene practice in the 1960s and 1970s and examines some of the challenges facing the profession in the late 1990s and beyond. These challenges include: (1) the changing nature of work, and its associated hazards; (2) the changing demographics of the work force; (3) the increasing recognition of occupational risk as a component of overall environmental risk; (4) the emerging recognition of delayed or late effects of prior occupational exposures on the duration and quality of life after retirement; (5) the increasing technical opportunities for recognizing and quantifying occupational and environmental risks; (6) the changing regulatory pressures; (7) the outsourcing of hygiene functions; and (8) the opportunities to apply hygiene principles and techniques to the recognition, evaluation, and control of hazards to the general public. Increasing opportunities for obtaining technical information that can inform our exposure and risk assessments arise from the development of: (1) sensitive passive monitors for time-weighted average analyses; (2) miniature direct-reading sensors for collecting time-resolved as well as average personal and area concentration data; (3) long-path sensors for area monitoring; (4) computerized tomography techniques for developing concentration maps from long-path monitoring data; (5) biomarkers of exposure; (6) technical means of determining worker presence at workstations; and (7) an ever-growing toxicological and epidemiological database for relating exposure to risk. To effectively exploit the opportunities created by the collection of vast amounts of data on exposure and exposure determinants, resulting from our growing measurement and analytical capabilities, we will also need to create means of accessing and interpreting such data. The new American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists—American Industrial Hygiene Association Guidelines and Recommendations on Data Elements for Occupational Exposure Databases, if adopted by those of us who generate such data, can help to fulfill the rich promise of access to large databases for analyses of exposure, influence of exposure determinants, efficacy of exposure controls, and the adequacy of exposure guidelines and limits.