There are thousands of chemicals in use in the US, whereas there are only several hundred Occupational Exposure Limits (OELs) for these chemicals.   For those chemicals that have sufficient toxicological data to generate OELs, there is still a limited pool of experts to evaluate the data and create a consensus-based OEL.   One such mechanism is the approach used by Workplace Environmental Exposure Level (WEEL) committee under the Occupational Alliance for Risk Science (OARS), a collaborative initiativemanaged by the not-for-profit Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA).  The goal of this arrangement is to promote worker health through increased access to high quality OELs, enhancements in methods for establishing worker-health exposure guidelines, and education and training in occupational risk assessment methods.  The OARS-WEEL Committee is a volunteer group of toxicologists and industrial hygienists from academic, governmental, corporate, and consulting backgrounds, who create health-based guideline values for chemical agents, called WEELs.  WEELs are limits that represent �safe� [or �relatively safe�] air concentrations that will protect most workers from adverse health effects related to occupational chemical exposures over a lifetime.  They can be used across industries as a central tool for worker health protection.  OARS does this by encouraging stakeholder engagement through open and transparent processes, invitation of stakeholders to attend science deliberations, free on-line access to WEELs and associated documentation, and active outreach, while using a scientifically-based methodological approach to evaluate the toxicological data including the application of appropriate safety & uncertainty factors or weight-of-evidence determination.   This process will be explained using examples from the WEELs.

Workplace environmental exposure level (WEEL) development for chemicals

246th National Meeting (2013)

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