Hazardous substances management and occupational medicine

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Is your company doctor familiar with the hazardous substances used in your company? Even more important from the perspective of a company doctor: Who handles these hazardous substances?

Preventative occupational health care for the use of hazardous substances

The subject of occupational health and safety is mostly covered by the occupational health and safety expert. This is particularly true for the evaluation of hazardous substances. In accordance with Section 6 (12) of the Ordinance on Hazardous Substances, every company must keep a hazardous substances index in which activities involving hazardous substances are listed. But as a rule, such an index does not directly specify if preventative occupational health care is required or has to be offered. In the ArbMedVV (Ordinance on Preventive Occupational Health Care), the hazardous materials which must be taken into account for preventative occupational health care are listed in the Annex, Part 1. However, the GefStoffV and the ArbMedVV have a different understanding of the term “hazardous substance”. The GefStoffV also includes mixtures (in Section 2 (1) and (2)), whereas the ArbMedVV defines this as the specific, chemically defined substance.

Knowledge of mixture components is important

If you want to determine whether a hazardous substance listed in its index is relevant for the company doctor, knowledge of the components is also required in order to match them with the substances listed in the ArbMedVV. This can be accomplished easily using appropriate software (such as GeSi³^®), as the respective ingredients can be checked in a database.

Risk assessment of hazardous substances

In accordance with Section 6 GefStoffV, a risk assessment must be carried out for activities involving hazardous materials. During this assessment at the latest, the implementation and regular execution of preventative occupational health care measures must be defined as actions to be taken. It is important to mention here that a risk assessment for a specific activity should also specify who performs that activity within the company. However, this should not include personal information about individuals: instead, the established roles or functions within the company should be indicated (e.g. “Maintenance”, “Machine operator”, “Caretaker”, etc.).

In addition to the relevant ingredients, the properties of the mixtures (as they can also be hazardous substances within the meaning of the GefStoffV) are also included. In particular, carcinogenic or germ cell mutagenic properties must be specified: although the list of carcinogenic or germ cell mutagenic substances provided in the ArbMedVV is far from complete (the TRGS 905 is more helpful in this regard), it nevertheless explicitly excludes all mixtures which have such properties. One can only hope that the mixtures are classified correctly (this can be checked using tools such as SDBcheck^®). In addition, all (!) respiratory and/or skin sensitising substances are of significance. What matters for mixtures, however, are not the properties of the individual ingredients but rather the relevant properties of the mixture itself. The properties of the mixture can be determined from the hazardous substances index, as such hazardous materials (mixtures and individual substances) are labelled as H317 and/or H334 (if classified correctly, see above). When creating a risk assessment, it is beneficial to use software that also documents the properties of hazardous materials and the ingredients when dealing with mixtures. On this basis, the checking process can be reliably automated.

Summary

• Preventative occupational health care often has to provided for activities involving hazardous materials.
• In order to determine the relevant actions, it is necessary to know the classification of the hazardous materials.
• For mixtures, their ingredients must also be known.
• With the help of suitable, database-driven software (e.g. GeSi³^®), the relevant hazardous substances can be identified quickly and reliably
• and the associated risk assessment can propose preventative occupational health care as a measure to be taken.
• The classification of hazardous materials must be reliable, especially for mixtures. This can be checked using suitable tools (e.g. SDBcheck^®).