Risk Assessment of

Occupational Health Hazards

Training on Work‐Relatedness of Diseases

Session Objectives
At the end of the session, participants will be able to:

• Discuss the basic concepts of risk assessment;

• Describe the process of conducting risk assessment; and
• Describe the factors that determine the development of disease.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
Definition: Risk
• Risk is the chance or probability that a person will be harmed or
experience an adverse health effect if exposed to a hazard.
• May indicate of how serious the harm could be.
• It may also apply to situations with property or equipment loss.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

What is risk assessment?

• Risk assessment is the process where you:
o Identify hazards;
o Analyze or evaluate the risk associated with that hazard; and
o Determine appropriate ways to eliminate or control the hazard.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
Why is risk assessment important?
They help to:
• Create awareness of hazards and risks;
• Identify who may be at risk (employees, cleaners, visitors,
contractors, the public, etc.);
• Determine if existing control measures are adequate or if more
should be done;
• Prevent injuries or illnesses when done at the design or planning
stage; and
• Prioritize hazards and control measures.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

What is the goal of risk assessment?

• The aim of the risk assessment process is to remove a hazard or
reduce the level of its risk by adding precautions or control measures,
as necessary.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
 Performing Risk Assessment
Risk Assessment of Occupational Health Hazards
Training on Work‐Relatedness of Diseases

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

Steps in Assessing Risk

• What are the toxicological effects
Hazard (endpoints)?
Identification
• At what dose level does the effects
Dose‐Response Assessment occur?

• How much chemical is the person

Exposure Assessment being exposed to?

Risk • Combine the hazard, dose‐response,

and exposure information to describe
Characterization the overall magnitude of the risk.
National Research Council’s Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process, 1983.
Department of Labor and Employment
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
1. Hazard Identification
• Definition
o Any source of potential damage, harm or adverse health effects on something
or someone under certain conditions at work
 Substance,
 Material,
 Process,
 Practice, etc.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

Examples of Hazards and Their Effects

Workplace Hazard Example of Hazard Example of Harm Caused

Tool Bladed tools/machines Cut

Agent/Substance Benzene Leukemia

Material Asbestos Mesothelioma
Source of Energy Electricity Shock, Electrocution

Condition Wet floor Slip, fall

Process Welding Metal fume fever
Practice Hard rock mining Silicosis
Department of Labor and Employment
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
1. Hazard Identification
• How are the hazards identified?
o Overall, the goal is to find and record possible hazards that may be present in
your workplace.
o Work as a team and include both people familiar with the work area, as well
as people who are not – this way you have both the "experienced" and
"fresh" eye to conduct the inspection.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

1. Hazard Identification
• Be sure that all hazards are found:
o Look at all aspects of the work.
o Include non‐routine activities, such as maintenance, repair, or cleaning.
o Look at accident/incident/near‐miss records.
o Include people who work “off site” either at home, on other job sites, drivers,
teleworkers, with clients, etc.
o Look at the way the work is organized or “done.”
o Look at foreseeable unusual conditions:
 Emergency situation; or
 Power outage.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
1. Hazard Identification
• Examine risks to
o Visitors or the general public
o Young or inexperienced workers
o Persons with disabilities
o New or expectant mothers

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

1. Hazard Identification
• Types of hazards
o Health hazards
 Working conditions which result in an illness, such as noise, improper working stations,
etc.
 Exposure to dangerous substances or microorganisms
 Often, latency between exposure and disease
o Safety hazards
 Working conditions where harm to the workers is of an immediate and violent nature
 Result in broken bones, cuts, bruises, sprains, loss of limbs, etc.
 The harm results in some kind of injury to the worker
 Associated with poorly guarded or dangerous equipment and machinery

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
Health Hazards

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

2. Dose‐Response Assessment
• Dose
o Total amount of a chemical that is administered to, or taken by, the organism
• Response
o The effect a chemical has on a living organism
• Effect of a chemical depends on:
o The amount of the chemical that gets into the organism
o Resulting concentration of the chemical in the body (the amount of chemical
compared with the body size)
o The length of exposure to the chemical
o The route of exposure

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
2. Dose‐Response Assessment
• Toxicity tests enable toxicologists
to learn about responses of
living organisms to doses of
chemicals
• A large dose of a beneficial
chemical can have a harmful
effect
• Small dose of a harmful chemical
can have no adverse effect

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

2. Dose‐Response Assessment
• A chemical is considered toxic if it produces adverse effects in a living
organism at levels of exposure that are likely to occur.
o Ranging from slight symptoms (i.e., such as headache, nausea, or rashes) to
severe symptoms (i.e., coma, convulsions, and death)
• How does a toxicologist know when a chemical is toxic to humans?
o When available, toxicologists study data from human populations that have
been exposed to specific chemicals.
o In the absence of human data, toxicologists test the toxicity of different doses
of chemicals on cell and tissue cultures, plants, and other animals, such as
rats and mice.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
2. Dose‐Response Assessment
• Tests
o Preliminary tests
 Ames test
 Determines potential mutagen or carcinogen
 Cell culture
o Animal tests
 Acute toxicity testing
 Determines dose of a chemical, under the intended route of exposure, that causes 50 percent
of the animals (mice or rats) to die (lethal dose, or LD50)

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

LD50

• Dose estimate of toxic effects:

o LD50
 Dose lethal to 50% of test animals

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
LD50

What is the LD50 for chemical XYZ,

based on the figure below?
a. 12 mg
b. 17 mg
c. 20 mg

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

2. Dose‐Response Assessment
• Tests
o Subacute toxicity tests to learn about the toxicity of a chemical after repeated
doses over 90 days
o Long‐term or chronic exposure studies in a similar manner, but the exposure
time is increased to a time period that can range from six months to two years

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
 2. Dose‐Response Assessment
• The characteristics of exposure to a chemical and the spectrum of
effects caused by the chemical come together in a correlative
relationship that toxicologists call the dose‐response relationship
• The relationship of dose to response can be illustrated as a graph
called a dose‐response curve.
o Graded responses of an individual
o Distribution of responses to different doses in a population of individuals
• Dose‐response relationship
o Describes how the likelihood and severity of adverse health effects (the
responses) are related to the amount and condition of exposure to an agent
(the dose provided)

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

Individual Dose‐Response Curve

Marczerski, A.E., and Kamrin, M. Toxicology for the citizen (figure 6). Institute for Environmental Toxicology, Michigan State University
Department of Labor and Employment
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
2. Dose‐Response Assessment

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

2. Dose‐Response Assessment
• An important aspect of dose‐
response relationships is the
concept of threshold
o Below which there are no adverse
effects from exposure to the
chemical
• Threshold:
o Point at which toxicity first
appears
o Occurs at the point where the
body's ability to detoxify or repair
toxic injury has been exceeded.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
2. Dose‐Response Assessment

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

2. Dose‐Response Assessment
• Cancer‐causing chemical
o General assumption in risk assessment has been that there are no exposures
that have “zero risk” unless there is clear evidence otherwise
o Difficulty in estimating risk
 Progressive disease – series of cellular transformations occur before cancer develops
 Often develops many years after exposure
 Limited studies

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
3. Exposure Assessment
• Process of measuring or estimating the intensity, frequency and
duration of human exposure to a toxic agent
o Considers all possible exposure routes
 Inhalation, skin contact, ingestion
o Duration of exposure
 Acute or chronic
• Determines the population that are actually or potentially exposed to
the toxic agent and measures the exposure (or estimate)
o Personal monitoring devices
o Measures in surrogate models

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

3. Exposure Assessment
• Variables in exposure assessment
o Exposed population
o Types of substances (occupational chemical or environmental pollutant)
o Single substance or mixture of substances
o Duration of exposure
o Modes of entry (inhalation, ingestion, skin contact)

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
4. Risk Characterization
• Last step in risk assessment
• Brings together and analyzes the information developed in the
previous three steps to estimate the risk of health effects in an
exposed population
• Assessments to describe the resulting health risks that are expected
to occur in the exposed population presented in different ways for
cancer and non‐cancer health effects

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

4. Risk Characterization
• Cancer risk
o Expressed as the maximum number of new cases of cancer projected to occur
in a population of one million people due to exposure to the cancer‐causing
substance over a 70‐year lifetime
o Factors affecting risk
 Actual exposure
 Genetic background
 Family history of certain types of cancer
 Health
 Diet
 Lifestyle choices (smoking and alcohol consumption)
o Compared to
 overall risk of cancer in the general population
 risk posed by all harmful chemicals in a particular medium, such as the air

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
International Agency for Research on Cancer
(IARC)
Group A Human Carcinogen sufficient human evidence for causal association
between exposure and cancer

Group B1 Probable Human limited evidence in human

Group B2 Probable Human Inadequate evidence in humans and sufficient
evidence in animals
Group C Possible Human Carcinogen limited evidence in animals

Group D Not Classifiable as to Inadequate evidence in animals

Human Carcinogenicity

Group E No Evidence of At least 2 adequate animal tests or both negative

Carcinogenicity in Humans epidemiology and animal studies

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

4. Risk Characterization
• Non‐Cancer risk
o Compares actual level of exposure to a chemical to the level of exposure that
is not expected to cause any adverse health effects, even in the most
susceptible people.
 Health reference levels
 Based on results of animal studies
o Health reference level may be set 100 to 100,000 times lower than the levels
of exposure observed to have no adverse effects on animal studies

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
Prioritizing Risks
Risk Assessment of Occupational Health Hazards
Training on Work‐Relatedness of Diseases

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

Prioritizing Risks
• Percentage of workforce exposed
• Frequency of exposure
• Degree of harm likely to result from the exposure
• Probability of occurrence

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
Risk Assessment
British Standards Organization
Severity of Harm
Likelihood of Harm
Slight Harm Moderate Harm Extreme Harm
Very unlikely Very low risk Very low risk High risk

Unlikely Very low risk Medium risk Very high risk

Likely Low risk High risk Very high risk

Very likely Low risk Very high risk Very high risk

Note: These categorizations and the resulting asymmetry of the matrix arise from the examples of harm and
likelihood illustrated within the British Standard. Organizations should adjust the design and size of the matrix
to suit their needs.

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

Definitions for Likelihood of Harm

• Very Likely
oTypically experienced at least once every six months by an
individual
• Likely
oTypically experienced once every five years by an individual
• Unlikely
oTypically experienced once during the working lifetime of an
individual
• Very unlikely
oLess than 1% chance of being experienced by an individual during
their working lifetime
Department of Labor and Employment
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER
Definitions for Severity of Harm
• When establishing potential severity of harm, information about the
relevant work activity should be considered, together with:
o Part(s) of the body likely to be affected;
o Nature of the harm, ranging from slight to extremely harmful
 Slightly harmful (e.g., Superficial injuries; minor cuts and bruises; eye irritation from
dust; nuisance and irritation; ill‐health leading to temporary discomfort)
 Harmful (e.g., lacerations; burns; concussion; serious sprains; minor fractures; deafness;
dermatitis; asthma; work‐related upper limb disorders; ill‐health)
 Extremely harmful (e.g., amputations; major fractures; poisonings; multiple injuries; fatal
injuries; occupational cancer; other severely life shortening diseases; acute fatal
diseases)

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER

Definition for Risk Level

• Tolerability guidance on necessary action and timescale
o Very low
 Acceptable
o Low
 Actions needed to further reduce these risks are assigned low priority
o Medium
 Risk reduction measures should be implemented within a defined time period.
o High
 Risk reduction measures should be implemented urgently
 Consider suspending or restricting the activity, or to apply interim risk control measures, until
this has been completed
o Very high
 Unacceptable
 Work activity should be halted until risk controls are implemented that reduces the risk so
that it is no longer very high
 If it is not possible to reduce the risk, the work should remain prohibited

Department of Labor and Employment

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH CENTER