12 Industrial Hygiene Risk Assessment
Tsvetan Popov1, Georgi Popov1, and Bruce Lyon2
1 University of Central Missouri
2 Brown & Brown
What is meant by the term “Industrial Hygiene Risk Assessment?” No universal methodology exists for assessing Industrial Hygiene (IH) risk that is applicable to all situations and all workplace health hazards. The conundrum of IH risk assessment reminds readers of a certain Donald Rumsfeld quote.
Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones. (Rumsfeld, 2002)
This anecdote underscores that IH risk assessment is most commonly used to evaluate exposures that are known or reasonably anticipated; however, it also can reveal health‐related risks that were previously undiscovered. In other words, IH risk assessment addresses both “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.”
12.1 Introduction ...
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