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It is the study of the adverse effects of chemicals or physical agents on living organisms. A more detailed explanation is that it is the study of the adverse physicochemical effects of chemical, physical or biological agents on living organisms and the ecosystem, including the prevention and amelioration of such adverse effects (definition supplied by the Society of Toxicology)
Whilst the Society of Toxicology’s definition spans chemical, physical or biological agents, in occupational health toxicology is usually applied to chemicals.
Some of the main ways that chemicals affect workers are illustrated in the image below.
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Hazardous chemical agents are frequently at the front stage of risk assessments. A key component of determining the potential harmfulness associated with exposure to chemicals lies in the field of toxicology.
Depending on the complexity and setting of the assessment this may require a registered toxicologist, an occupational medicine specialist, an occupational medicine practitioner or an occupational health nurse practitioner.
Often the risk assessor must consider the “toxicokinetics” (what the body does to the chemical as it passes through) and the “toxicodynamics” (what the chemical does to the body as it passes through).
A commonly used resource for toxicological information of workplace chemicals is the “Safety Data Sheet” (“SDS”).
Other resources include the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (“ATSDR”) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (“IARC”).
If workers are potentially exposed to chemical hazards, then the potential for those chemicals to cause harm needs to be understood. This will require a toxicological assessment. In most day to day circumstances, the assessment need not be very detailed. A perusal of good quality Safety Data Sheets may be enough. However, it can become complicated, especially if there are chemicals with complex effects on human health, and/or with various exposure pathways.
The employer should establish a chemical hazards inventory, in which all the workplace chemicals are listed, with a short summary of their acute and chronic effects.
Chemical toxicology is also very important in “Human Health Risk Assessments” (“HHRA”), where the assessor must determine the potential for communities to harmed by chemicals that enter into the air, soil, or water supplies
