3M Transcript for the following interview: Ep-33 What Is ...

3M Transcript for the following interview: Ep-33 What Is Occupational Hygiene? Mark Reggers (R) Peter Aspinall (A)

Introduction: The 3M Science of Safety podcast is a free publication. The information presented in this podcast is general only, and you should always seek the advice of a licensed or certified professional in relation to your specific work or task.

Welcome to the 3M Science of Safety podcast presented by 3M Australia and New Zealand Personal Safety Division. This is a podcast that is curious about the signs and systems of all things work, health and safety, that keep workers safe and protect their health. I am Mark Reggers, an occupational hygienist, who likes to ask the questions Why, How, and Please Explain. Whether you are a safety professional, occupational hygienist, or someone with any level of WHS responsibility in the workplace, maybe you are a user of safety products or maybe you are a bit of a safety nerd who finds this stuff really interesting, then this is a podcast for you.

(R) Today we're talking with Peter Aspinall about what is occupational hygiene. Welcome, Pete.

(A) Thanks, Mark. How are you doing?

(R) This is probably a topic I probably should've done a long while ago because I've had quite a few occupational hygienists on as guests and we really haven't delved into what occupational hygiene is or what do occupational hygienists do. But before we get into the good stuff, can you please introduce yourself? Who are you? Where are you from and what do you do?

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(A) Thanks, mate. I'm an occupational hygienist. I'm actually a certified occupational hygienist, a COH. I work for a company called WSP who is a large engineering and consulting firm, global company. We do a lot of work for industries that need experience, information about the job that they're planning to do or that they are doing. We have people who work on roads and mining and infrastructure. We have buildings, we have architectural divisions. We have water resources. We have environmental resources. We also have an occupational hygiene division that does a lot with hazardous materials and contaminated land and my role as an occupational hygienist is to not only support our clients in their occupational hygiene needs but also look at our own people and make sure that they're protected in the workplace.

(R) You'd have a lot of people in those very broad areas that are at all these different sites that also need their health and safety looked after or considered from your own company's point of view.

(A) 100% and that's probably the largest part of my job is to look at our own people just as much as our clients' people and understand what they may be exposed to. Now, most of them work out of offices which is generally accepted as a reasonable safer alternative. We have people going to site. We have people going into contaminated land areas where they may be exposed to unknown quantities of chemicals coming out of a well or in areas where they may be looking at petrol stations and a remediation of soils and they get involved in that work and we need to make sure that they're safe as much as anybody.

(R) That leads into that question what is occupational hygiene? You hinted but if we had to go back to a definition, or how would you explain it to someone that you've met at a party and they say, "What do you do?" and you say, "I'm an occupational hygienist," then you say ...

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(A) We often are associated with the measurement and interpretation of what is a risk. We get involved with the health aspects of safety, so not so much the things that will hurt you today, but maybe the things that will hurt you in the long term or stop you from having a nice retirement.

(R) So, dusts, and noise that may seem in little doses as a one-off, not that important or not that much impact but ...

(A) Over a long period of time, that's where we can help you with those sorts of assessments. But it's not just that even. It's also getting involved with some of the physical hazards and noise. It's also looking at vibrations, looking at maybe moulds or exposure to biological hazards. There's a whole range of different things that we get involved with. So, to summarise and I guess to put the most accurate definition that we use as occupational hygienists, technically when we're talking about ourselves. we are the art and the science dedicated to occupational health. So, occupational being workers and health and hygiene is the long-term effects on people; not so much the safety effects and the injuries, but more the health, long term.

(R) It goes hand in hand with that risk assessment, or we're thinking about, 'Let's not chop our finger off,' but, 'Let's not breathe stuff in,' that over a course of a working life is going to have very serious effects as well.

(A) That's right. We tend to say with safety that we want to send you home at the end of your shift safe. With occupational hygiene, we're looking to make sure that you only get home at the need of your shift, safely, but you also have a long-term retirement and that's not impacted by the work that you've been doing. The Australian Institute of Occupational Hygiene actually defines occupational hygiene particularly as an art and science dedicated to anticipation, recognition, evaluation, communication and control of environmental hazards that people may come into

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contact with in their working life. And so, these things may result in injuries, illnesses for people long term, affect their wellbeing and have them as inactive members of the community.

(R) It's fairly broad, but I guess that's the role because workplaces are fairly broad with the type of stuff they're doing, and it changes from one workplace to another. What's some of the weirdest things people thought occupational hygiene means. I've had plenty of ones myself, as an occupational hygienist. What are a couple of interesting one's people think what occupational hygiene is but actually isn't?

(A) One of the best ones that I've come across, and it's a classic, and everyone brings it is, "Oh, so you're a dentist's assistant. Is that right? Occupational hygiene," and the other one that's probably more common is that you help with cleaning the toilets, the changing out the handwashing and those things. The other one that's just come up recently for me is we did some work with a business that produces a lot of food products and they have a real hygiene program which is all about making sure that your hands are clean and that you're not coughing into the food where ...

(R) Food safety aspect.

(A) Very much a food safety aspect of that work. And that's another one that often gets confused. Where we sit, though, we can help with a lot of those aspects of that work.

(R) They're key words; anticipation, recognition, evaluation, communication and control. I want to delve a little bit deeper in each of those words, because they're those key pillars or foundations of what occupational hygienists do. So, anticipation; what's that in the occupational hygiene world?

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(A) So anticipation is really interesting in that you almost need to have some experience to be able to identify what the potential hazards are in a workplace but if you've got a new job that's being done or it's a new project that's being undertaken or a new process in the workplace, having an occupational hygienist come in and look at it and review it and have that discussion with the workers or the people planning those jobs is really important that they may be able to help to identify maybe some potential hazards when they come out of the work and maybe a by-product or a gas that comes off that process or it could be a hazard that develops in the workplace while the people are working in that area so that we can identify ways to minimise the hazard potential from the start so that we don't have to come back and retrofit a business. We don't have to come back and readjust the way the work's being done after it started.

(A) So, you anticipate what the potential hazards may be and get ahead of the curve and make sure that you're preventing them occurring in the first place.

(R) So, we've got anticipation and then recognition. What's that step?

(A) So, recognition works hand in hand with anticipation. But you need to be able to recognise what the likelihood of that occurring is. So, anyone can say that that's a noisy hazard or that's a noisy task or that's a really dusty job. Being able to recognise what the hazard likelihood is, is that amount of dust going to cause problems or is that little bit of dust actually going to cause a lot more problems because of what's in the dust and being able to recognise the severity or recognise the complexity of the work that's being done that needs to be managed. So, a big part of our job with recognition is being across all the different appropriate standards that may be relevant to a particular process or the particular workplace that you're helping out, being able to identify maybe some trends that are occurring where people are showing symptoms that may need to be managed and treated, recognising where people may be getting some hearing loss that's

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