HISTORY OF BRITISH OCCUPATIONAL HYGIENE PART 12
ETHICS OF ANALYSIS BY ALAN LEIBOWITZ
Modern industrial hygienists and other occupational and environmental health and safety professionals have access to an unprecedented amount of data to inform their everyday decisions. Editor’s note: The case study in this article is fictitious and is intended to highlight ethical issues in the practice of industrial hygiene. Any resemblance to real people or organizations is coincidental. Please send your responses to synergist@aiha.org. Responses may be printed in a future issue as space permits.
Much of that data comes from sources that OEHS professionals could only have dreamt of decades ago. From the 1940s through the 1960s, most practitioners relied on paper sources obtained during their education and perhaps some key, costly references acquired throughout their careers. It was rare for the practicing OEHS professional to have easy access to journals beyond those available through association memberships. The process of finding and using reliable OEHS data first incorporated electronic elements in the 1970s, when the fax machine became common. But
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even in the 1980s, reference books were still the primary sources of EHS information, and despite the use of faxes it could still take weeks to obtain a copy of an article, if it arrived at all. Eventually, in the late 1980s, thanks to the availability of desktop computers and online data, electronic access to technical literature slowly became a real possibility for industrial hygienists. In those early days of computerized data retrieval, a researcher who provided enough background information could have an online search performed, usually by a librarian. If the article in question had been indexed, a copy might be obtained.
To make such a request, the industrial hygienist would generally need to know that a relevant document existed or provide appropriate keywords that might unearth unknown research reports. The various data search services included different publications in their search groups, and none were comprehensive. Therefore, even into the mid-1990s, it was most common for OEHS professionals to keep a few key technical reference volumes available as their primary sources of information for evaluating occupational exposure concerns and recommending appropriate protective measures.
BOHS.ORG
