Comparison of methods for assessing occupational health hazards in chemical process development and design phase

Abstract

Early consideration of health, besides safety and environment, in process lifecycle is vital to achieve sustainable process. Health assessment methods for chemical plant industries are very much lacking especially at inherent level. This paper focuses on the methods that consider impact on workers’ health due to occupational hazards. Twenty methods are reviewed for their goal and scope, developer, target application, required data, considered aspects and parameters, exposure assessment, hazard extent estimation, index formulation, and output data. The methods differ significantly in the aspects and parameters included in the assessment, which consequently influencing the way data is processed. The level of agreement of the methods with the occupational health definition from chemical process perspective is also described. Almost half of them do not fit the definition since their risk estimation approaches involve catastrophic accident type of event. The study does not only compare the existing methods, but also reveals the need of health assessment approaches for chemical process design that abide the actual occupational health and industrial hygiene concept. The ultimate objective of the paper is to provide a detailed comparison of occupational health assessment methods, which will benefit especially the industries to identify the method suitable for their assessment needs.