Strategy for Chemical Exposure Assessment in the Electric Utility Industry
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 28, 2019
- Creator
-
Chen, Kevin Y.
- Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering
- Abstract
- There have been many approaches to determining historical exposures to chemicals in exposure assessment studies. This study used committees of industry experts to obtain qualitative exposure estimates for workers in two electric utility companies potentially exposed to five chemicals of interest (benzene, creosote, herbicides, polychlorinated biphneyls, and solvents) since the 1930s. The selection of these five chemical was based on evidence suggesting an association between them and leukemia and brain cancer. Study objectives, list of most common job titles within each occupational category, occupational job category descriptions, and five chemical survey forms were distributed to the each company for review and later used in the exposure assessment process. The results obtained show discrepancies in exposures between the two companies to be possibly attributed to differences between company committee members, differences in tasks performed by persons holding the most common job titles in occupational categories, regulatory changes and their effects, technological changes, and unclear definitions of exposure levels. These discrepancies raise concerns regarding the reliability of the estimates made by the company committees. However, the committees did consistently indicate occupational categories with potential exposure to the chemicals (creosote, herbicides, PCBs, and solvents). Thus, the exposure information can be used to determine if a relationship exists between exposure to the chemicals and the diseases of interest (leukemia and brain cancer).
- Date of publication
- August 1991
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Flynn, Michael
- Savitz, David A.
- Todd, Lori A.
- Degree
- Master of Science in Public Health
- Academic concentration
- Industrial Hygiene
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Graduation year
- 1991
- Language
- Deposit record
- ad7e9272-7c4f-43e0-afeb-7a5f2526ad76
Relations
- Parents:
This work has no parents.