Tomorrow I'll be heading off to Brussels for the meeting on REACH (REACH: Registration and Beyond: Exposure Scenarios and safe handling advice) organised jointly by BOHS and their Dutch sister organisation, NVVA.
The conference focuses on some important issues , including exposure assessment. REACH requires manufacturers and importers of substances and mixtures to develop exposure scenarios and appropriate risk management measures. This is a major requirement which, with the current methodologies available for assessing occupational, environmental and consumer exposures, would be impossible to achieve. Consequently a lot of work is going into developing exposure models and guidance for exposure assessment which manufacturers and importers will be able to use when the target dates for the exposure scenarios approaches.
I'm hoping that the conference will help to bring me up to date on what progress has been made. There are so many factors that affect exposures in the workplace, so it will be interesting to see how far these have been incorporated into the models being developed. Its a big ask.
