Occupational Risk Assessment: How NIOSH Estimates Health Risks at Work

Key points

• Workers worldwide face health hazards on the job.
• Unlike safety hazards, which cause injuries, health hazards cause illness.
• Risk assessment lets NIOSH recommend ways to control workplace exposures and cut health risks.

What it is

Occupational risk assessment estimates the health risks of different levels of exposure to a workplace hazard, so the risks can be eliminated, controlled or reduced. It asks three questions:

1. What can happen?
2. How likely is it?
3. What are the consequences if it does?

NIOSH assesses chemical hazards — carcinogens and non-carcinogens — physical hazards such as noise, radiation and musculoskeletal injury, and others such as shift work. Its methods are explained in Current Intelligence Bulletin 69.

How NIOSH does it

Choosing chemicals: NIOSH weighs the needs of partners — the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Mining Safety and Health Administration, organized labor, industry and the National Occupational Research Agenda councils — along with how much of a chemical is used at work, how likely workers are to be exposed, and how severe its health effects are, based on the science available.

NIOSH's three steps for occupational risk assessment. CDC.

1. Identify the hazard.
2. Assess the exposure–response relationship.
3. Characterize the risk.

Who uses it

• Employers and safety professionals use NIOSH's recommendations to reduce exposure — by eliminating a hazard, substituting a safer chemical, adding engineering controls or using personal protective equipment.
• Government: OSHA has built NIOSH risk assessments into workplace standards, the EPA has used them in environmental assessments, and states and others have used them to set exposure limits.
• Researchers: NIOSH has broadened risk assessment methods and improved how the uncertainty of exposure–response models is described, through techniques such as model averaging and semi-parametric modeling — valuable because data on a hazard are often scarce.

Selected reports

• Current Intelligence Bulletin 70: Health Effects of Occupational Exposure to Silver Nanomaterials
• Current Intelligence Bulletin 69: NIOSH Practices in Occupational Risk Assessment
• Current Intelligence Bulletin 65: Occupational Exposure to Carbon Nanotubes and Nanofibers
• Current Intelligence Bulletin 63: Occupational Exposure to Titanium Dioxide
• Criteria for a Recommended Standard: Diacetyl and 2,3-Pentanedione
• Criteria for a Recommended Standard: Hexavalent Chromium
• Criteria for a Recommended Standard: Refractory Ceramic Fibers

Sources

Based on "Occupational Risk Assessment," National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain. A decorative illustration and the reports' cover thumbnails are not reproduced.