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International OccupationalHygiene AssociationCollaboration between members from nationalsocieties on OHTA module translation
Nathalie Argentin
e-mail: presidence@sofhyt.fr
For several years, some Occupational Hygiene Training Association(OHTA) modules have been translated from English into Frenchbut they were waiting for validation to be considered as final
and made available to all on the OHLearning website. That is why
several members from different French-speaking national societies(SOFHYT – France; SSHT – Switzerland; AUDA-NEPAD – African Union;
CRBOH – Canada; and BSOH – Belgium; and aided by SAIOH – SouthAfrica) are currently working together to ensure the availability ofOHTA modules in French. This is a good example of collaboration

between national societies to develop occupational hygiene
throughout the world. The aim is also to allow French-speaking
countries to have access to such training modules to improve theiroccupational hygiene knowledge. If any of you speak French andwould like to help us, please contact me at presidence@sofhyt.fr.

Training developments for occupational hygienists
in New ZealandDerek Miller
e-mail: dmillernz@outlook.co.nz
A recent report from the Health and Safety Association of New
Zealand (HASANZ) identified gaps in the workforce and highlighted
the lack of occupational hygienists in New Zealand (NZ). The reportstates that there were 32 fully qualified occupational hygienists
and 17 technicians in 2018. This is fewer than in many comparablecountries. The report also stated that there are many challenges todevelop accessible education, training and professional development
pathways to meet current and future demands.
To address these challenges, WorkSafeNZ funded a project to help
build the country’s capability and capacity in occupational hygiene.
As a part of this project, the New Zealand Occupational Hygiene
Society (NZOHS) and HASANZ engaged with tertiary providers. This
resulted in Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia, and Massey andOtago Universities in New Zealand working with NZOHS and HASANZ
to find a solution.
The work involved was not straightforward and the staff at theuniversities, especially ECU, is to be commended as they worked throughthe complexities of three universities working together to achieve one
common goal, viz. to have more occupational hygienists in NZ.
In October this year, after nearly two years, it was announced
that the Master of Occupational Hygiene and Toxicology degree
will be available to NZ students to support workplace developmentof the health and safety workforce in NZ. The degree is accreditedby the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygiene (AIOH) and theBritish Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS), which means that NZ
can help contribute to supplying more occupational hygienists tofulfil the shortages in the domestic, and eventually global, markets.
In these days of COVID-19 restrictions on international travel,42

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this programme is mostly offered online, which allows our students
to study at home. Workshops provide real-world experiences forstudents to develop practical skills needed in the assessment ofworkplace hazards that can harm human health. These activities
could include monitoring hazards such as noise, radiation, dust,gases, and biological contaminants to which people are exposed
every day. The workshops can also be delivered locally.
ECU associate professor, Sue Reed (director: Occupationaland Environmental Health and Safety), who is also a certified
occupational hygienist (COH)®, says “It is important that eachcountry develops their own training programme for professional
occupational hygienists. Many New Zealanders don’t realise the rolethat occupational hygienists play in protecting both the workforce
and the general community from adverse impacts on their healthfrom chemical and biological hazards”.
It has been good to see ECU, Massey University, Otago University,HASANZ and WorkSafeNZ all support NZ efforts to train ourworkforce. There is still work to be done in ensuring that a sustainablesystem exists into the future. This is being led by ECU working with
Otago and Massey Universities to get their own accredited courses
up and running. They are advocating to the NZ government forscholarships to assist NZ students to achieve their goals of becoming
occupational hygienists.

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International OccupationalHygiene AssociationFirst ever Swiss Society of Occupational Hygiene
professional development course
Samantha Connell
e-mail: samantha.connell.cih@outlook.com
The Swiss Society of Occupational Hygiene (SSOH) is proud to sharethat it successfully conducted it’s first ever professional development course (PDC) this year! The course, ‘How to define an exposure measurements strategy and interpret the data via the use ofstatistical tools’, was held on 18 September 2020 and instructedby Prof. Jérôme Lavoué from the University of Montreal. The course
was originally planned to be held in-person in April 2020 but wasrescheduled due to COVID-19 restrictions. It was held over Zoom
with approximately 40 participants and was open to members andFigure 1. Poll question from the opening of the course

non-members. It was interactive, with poll questions asking participants to use their judgement regarding exposure data, and exercises
using the platform, Expostats (www.expostats.ca) – a widely used tool
to statistically analyse occupational exposure data, developed by Prof.
Lavoué and colleagues. Responses to the poll are shown in Figure1. The
SSOH would like to extend a big thank you to all of the participants!
The SSOH would also like to acknowledge the planning committee
for it’s work: Dr Ludovic Vieille-Petit (co-president), Samantha Connell(Board member), Burim Thaçi (member), Sébastien Linder (member)and Deyan Poffet (member). The committee is open to exchange withother societies on future PDCs and their experiences. Stay tuned –SSOH plans to hold two events in 2021!

Changes proposed by Europe to the managementof cancer-causing substances
Kevin Bampton
e-mail: kevin.bampton@bohs.org
The British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) has been asked
to respond to changes to the employee protections that have been
proposed by the European Union. This has prompted further discussions with the BOHS head office and the board, regarding the legal
ramifications of Brexit on occupational exposure limits (OELs) for
carcinogens and mutagens.
Additional protections against cancer-causing agents, which
will not automatically benefit British workers after January 2021,
have been proposed by the European Commission. It has recommended additional limits to exposure of workers to benzene,
nickel and acrylonitrile. According to the European Commission,
this would affect people working in industries as diverse as car
maintenance, electronics manufacture, and the fur and leather
industry. According to the Commission, these substances cause arange of cancers, including breast, brain and stomach cancers,leukaemia, and miscarriage. They have proposed an amendment
to the Carcinogens and Mutagens Directive requiring the distribution of recommendations for risk reduction through appropriate risk
management measures, including reducing the OELs which set thelevels beyond which employers should be criminally liable.

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The BOHS is expressing concerns that, after Brexit, UK guidanceon these substances might not be informed by the latest research
about cancer risks in humans. Published government guidance on
acrylonitrile, for example, references the International Agency for
Research on Cancer (IARC), saying that acrylonitrile is only a possible
human carcinogen. However, last year IARC’s own expert committee
stated that there is now evidence that it probably does cause cancer
in men and women, and has recommended that the IARC formallyraise its risk level. Nonetheless, this could take IARC several years.
The European Commission has raised the risk levels already, using
an expedited methodology for scientific review.
While some members of the BOHS have raised concerns about
the new role of the Risk Assessment Committee in speedily setting OELs, the BOHS is using its membership of the newly formed
European Platform on Occupational Hygiene (a consortium ofVol 26 No 6 November/December 2020

IOHA NEWSLETTERGLOBAL EXPOSURE MANAGER
International OccupationalHygiene Association

health prevention professional bodies) to welcome the new researchand legal limits for workers in Europe. It also joins IARC and fellow
European Platform members in calling for Europe to do further workon the cancer-causing properties of metal-cutting fluids. The Healthand Safety Executive (HSE) is yet to say whether the new OELs will
be followed in the UK.
Brexit has placed the UK in a confused legal position with regard
to pending and prospective legal standards. In leaving the European
Union, there is now no binding legal obligation on the UK government to ensure the updating of legal standards for such exposuresin the workplace. This means that rules restricting exposure tocancer-causing substances might not always be updated in linewith scientific discovery. That decision will be a question of priority
and time given to it by government departments; and is subject toconsideration by the HSE as they review their strategy under theleadership of a new chair and former minister, Sarah Newton.
The situation means that employers and public bodies will need
to be vigilant and keep up with the latest science if they are not to fall
foul of costly lawsuits. More importantly, it means that there will betremendous pressure on the UK’s science and health infrastructures
to keep up to date with global research and to find practicable ways
to prevent workers from developing avoidable cancers.

Some of the cancer-causing chemicals that the UK has agreed
need further control might no longer be subject to planned controls.
In 2019, the European Council agreed to changes to an earlier list ofcontrols for 13 cancer-causing substances. The UK agreed that limits
needed to be put in place to protect workers but argued for more time.
There is now no guarantee that those safeguards will ever be in place.
One of the substances is formaldehyde, which is widely used in
the funeral industry to enable dignified burial. The government hadargued that it would take until 2024 for the UK industry to protect
funeral home workers from cancer-causing levels of the substance,delaying the implementation of safeguards. Another area where
Europe has proposed to make inroads in protecting workers relates
to cytotoxic drugs, which are widely used by healthcare professionals
and veterinarians in cancer treatments.
Whilst the UK regulations on the control of substances hazardous to health already require that carcinogens (and mutagens) arecontrolled to as low as reasonably practicable below a limit value,
the limit value itself is key in driving control improvement. The BOHS
is concerned that, unless the UK exposure limits are updated, basedon the latest research and information, existing standards may be
putting workers at elevated levels of risk when compared to workers
doing similar tasks in the European Union.

Guatemalan Association of OccupationalSafety and Security
Ana Rocío Bautistae-mail: Rocio.bautista@inaf.com.gt
Guatemala, in Central America, is the largest economy in our region,but it is also one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with ahuman development index of 0.651, below the world average of 0.731
and that of Latin American countries (0.759). Nonetheless, there aremany industries operating in the country, related mainly to food-processing, mining, and agriculture. Most have incipient or non-existing
occupational health and safety (OHS) programmes.
Historically, OHS regulation in Guatemala has been limited. For
many years Guatemala only had one regulation, which was issued
in 1958. It was not until 2014 that the OHS regulation was updated.
Since then, there have been consistent advances in the OHS field inGuatemala. However, with the advances, knowledge gaps in occupational hygiene have become evident, highlighting the need foradditional OHS professional training and guidelines.
With this in mind, the Guatemalan Association of Occupational
Safety and Security (AGSSO) was established in 2017 with thesupport of a multidisciplinary group of OHS professionals. TheAGSSO is a private non-profit organisation created to promote OHS.
Since its inception, the AGSSO has been conducting training andevents where all types of OHS practitioners participate to obtain more
technical and soft skills.
The objectives of the AGSSO are:
1. To promote research and standardisation in OHS
2. To edit, publish and distribute technical material related to OHS

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Vol 26 No 6 November/December 2020

3. To generate change in OHS culture in Guatemala through technicaland professional training within legal frameworks
In the past year, the AGSSO became a member of the IOHA. It is alsoa part of the Comité de las Américas Asociaciones de Higiene Industrial
de Latinoamérica and the Red Panamericana de Higiene Ocupacional(REPHO). The AGSSO also has alliances with the American IndustrialHygiene Association (AIHA), Centro de Ergonomía Aplicada (CENEA)
and Centro Guatemalteco de Producción más Limpia.
In 2018, AGSSO members supported the translation of the ACGIH
2018 TLVs for biological exposure indices (BEIs) into Spanish. This
allowed them to distribute the materials among OHS professionals inGuatemala. In 2019, the AGSSO launched the first diploma in industrial
hygiene in Guatemala with the support of the Universidad del Valle deGuatemala and a number of certified industrial hygiene professionals
from Latin America. The AGSSO has also conducted training courses
and workshops on neuroleadership in OHS, and strategies for managing occupational exposures.

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The journey of mainstreaming industrial hygienein Malaysia
Abdul Hafiz Abdullahe-mail: abdulhafizabdullah@gmail.com
Malaysia has progressed in strengthening occupational safety andhealth (OSH) management in the country. With the theme OSH
Transformation to inculcate preventive culture, the five-year strategic
National OSH Master Plan (MP) 2016–2020 was developed to enhance
the standard of OSH at the workplace. The OSH MP is expected tocontribute to the reduced rate of occupational accidents and fatalities and thus assist the government in raising the quality of life of thepeople. The quality of working life is one of the elements contributing
to the wellbeing of Malaysians. Appreciating the increasing trendof occupational diseases and poisoning reported, and the growing
concern about workers’ health risk at work places over the years, theDepartment of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) of Malaysia
has included ‘Mainstreaming Industrial Hygiene (IH)’ as one of themain strategies under the National OSH MP 2016–2020 to strengthenindustrial hygiene management practices in the country. There are
five programmes registered under the mainstreaming IH strategy,
as shown in Figure 2.
One of the main OSH MP 2016–2020 key performance indicators(KPIs) is to increase reporting of occupational diseases and poisoningof workers by 30%. According to the DOSH, we have achieved a 65.4%
increase from 2015 to 2019. Based on 2019 reporting, the top threeproblems reported were occupational noise-related hearing disorders(91%), occupational musculoskeletal disorders (4%), and occupational
skin diseases (1%).
Despite the many hurdles and challenges faced in the country– particularly the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has restrictedmovement and forced people to embrace the new normal of working– the plans registered under the mainstreaming IH strategy are close
to completion. Nevertheless, strong support and fostered collaboration between various government bodies and agencies, associations,industries, and health and safety practitioners is required to ensure thatthe plans are executed and progress is made to meet the desired objectives. The high-impact programmes that contributed to the reportingachievement include the formation of the Industrial Hygiene Catalyst
Committee (IH2C), Basic Occupational Health (BOH), ergonomic risk
assessment (ERA) tools, Systematic Occupational Health Enhancement
Level Programme (SoHELP), SoHELP Do It Yourself (DIY), and Noise
Exposure Regulations 2019.
The Malaysian Industrial Hygiene Association (MIHA) – the organisation of professionals dedicated to promoting industrial hygiene (IH) inMalaysia – has also played a pivotal role in realising the strategy. TheMIHA focuses its activities on raising awareness, capability development, standards/guidelines development, and collaboration with otheradvocators of IH. Hence, the national collaboration, such as that via theMalaysian Federation for Occupational Safety and Health (MyFOSH),is essential to bring IH management and practices in Malaysia toa higher level. The 900+ MIHA members can only do so much but,through collaboration, we can leverage on the strength of the almost
8 000 MyFOSH members. At an international level, being part of theIOHA gives the MIHA opportunities to collaborate and exchange
lessons learned and best practices with other peers, connecting with35 member countries and covering almost 18 000 members.
There are still many challenges and efforts required to further boost
and sustain good IH management practices in Malaysia, especiallywhen the effects of health hazards are considered as long term. Thereis also a lack of drive to further invest in controlling the risks in view ofcurrent economic and business constraints aggravated by COVID-19,
globally. Hence, continuous collaboration is the key to further improve
IH management practices in Malaysia. We are hopeful that the new
OSH-MP 2021–2025 will drive IH reform, especially in areas requiringmost attention, and that it will continue to ensure optimal protectionof workers’ health.
Note: The contents of this article are contributed through collaboration between
the Malaysian Industrial Hygiene Association and the Department of Occupational
Safety and Health of Malaysia.

Occupational health services programme
at the workplace
Comprehensive healthrisk assessment

Industrial hygiene
outreach programme

Re-engineering of industrial
hygiene management

Mainstreaming IH

Effective enforcement oflegislation relating toindustrial hygiene

Figure 2. Mainstreaming IH strategy as part of OSH MP 2016–2020

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Vol 26 No 6 November/December 202043