Maximum-risk employees

Maximum-risk employees Workers who are most likely to be exposed to the highest levels of hazardous agents. 

The next step is selection of a maximum risk employee. When there are different processes where employees may be exposed to formaldehyde, a maximum risk employee should be selected for each work operation. 

Selection of the maximum risk employee requires professional judgment. The best procedure for selecting the maximum risk employee is to observe employees and select the person closest to the source of formaldehyde. Employee mobility may affect this selection eg. if the closest employee is mobile in his tasks, he may not be the maximum risk employee. Air movement patterns and differences in work habits will also affect selection of the maximum risk employee. 

When many employees perform essentially the same task, a maximum risk employee cannot be selected. In this circumstance, it is necessary to resort to random sampling of the group of workers. The objective is to select a subgroup of adequate size so that there is a high... 

The maximum individual health risk for FATE employees should be less... 

Tlie maximum individual fatal risk for employees should be less tlian ... 

The maximum allowable working concentration of the solvent in air to which employees may be exposed is regulated by law. Solvents with small toxic potential and health risk have high exposure values. The toxicity and other stability and reactivity aspects are important in terms of environmental relevance, e.g. the amount of solvent that is permitted to be vented into the atmosphere. As such the working concentration of the solvent has an impact on the investment in and operational costs of the solvent recovery system. It determines whether the process needs official permission and to what extent regular inspections are necessary. If the amount of solvent to be vented is not restricted this simplifies very much the design of the whole process, as the different steps do not need to be sealed completely. 

The exposure limit value (ELV) is the maximum amount of vibration an employee may be exposed to on any single day. It represents a high risk above which employees should not be exposed. Daily ELV is 5m/s Health and safety surveillance, information and training must be provided by the employers. 

Employees should be made aware of the risks. Local exhaust ventilation around the lips of vapour degreasing tanks is necessary, and in confined spaces good general ventilation is essential. In work areas, atmospheric monitoring is recommended to ensure that exposure is kept to a minimum and certainly below the Maximum Exposure Limit (MEL) of 350 ppm for 8 hours. 

A typical assessment confined to employees on a site might use the recommended 10 pa Maximum Tolerable Risk (for 1—2 fatalities) but may address 10 sources of risk to an individual in a particular place. Thus, an average of 10 pa would be used as the Maximum Tolerable Risk across the 10 hazards and, therefore, for each of the 10 safety functions involved. By the same token, the Broadly Acceptable Risk would be factored from 10 pa to 10 pa. 

The question arises of how long an individual is exposed to a risk. Earlier practice has been to factor the maximum tolerable failure rate by the proportion of time it offers the risk (for example, an enclosure which is only visited 2 hrs per week). However, that approach would only be valid if persons (on-site) suffered no other risk outside that 2 hrs of his/her week. In case of off-site, the argument might be different in that persons may well only be at risk for a proportion of the time. Thus, for on-site personnel, the proportion of employee exposure time should be taken as the total working proportion of the week. 

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