Towards an exposure - damage approach in the quantification of occupational risk in workplaces with dangerous substances

The work proposes a new approach for the quantification of occupational risk overcoming the limitations of the common qualitative methodologies widely used by industry and authorities. The proposed methodological approach has been developed at the Technical University of Crete and is based on the principles applied in risk assessment for the control of major-accident hazards involving dangerous substances. It aims at establishing a systematic risk analysis tool for the quantified assessment of occupational risk. The index of 'Individual Occupational Risk' is introduced and defined as a probability, function of four variables, normalized over real working time: the frequency of an active hazard, the probability of an employee being present at a work-place, the extent of separate consequence zones and the employee vulnerability. The methodology has been applied to several industrial environments and has verified its potentiality to provide documented support on important decisions on occupational (health and safety) improving measures related to process conditions, job management and protective measures.