Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
OSHA/NIOSH Methods
Both OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and NIOSH (National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) were created under the Occupational
Safety and Health Act of 1970 for a common goal of protecting workers' safety and
health. Although OSHA and NIOSH were created by the same Act of Congress, they
are two distinct agencies with separate responsibilities. OSHA is administrated
by the U.S. Department of Labor and is responsible for creating and enforcing
workplace and health regulations. NIOSH is a research agency and is a part of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Department of Health and
Human Services. The OSHA and NIOSH methods mostly used in air sampling and
analysis are probably the most
important methods
for
industrial hygiene
professionals.
Entitled ''NIOSH Manual of Analytical Methods (NMAM) (4th edition,
vol. 1-7, Department of Health and Human Service, U.S. Government Printing
Office, Washington, D.C., 1995), the NMAM is a collection of methods for the
sampling and analysis of contaminants in workplace air, bodily fluids (blood and
urine of workers), biological, bioaerosols, and bulk samples (NIOSH, 2003). NIOSH
methods numbers are assigned by sampling techniques as described below, and the
details of their methods can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.cdc.gov/
niosh/nmam/either by method number or by chemical name:
0001-0899: General air sampling
0900-0999: Bioaerosols
1000-1999: Organic gases on charcoal
2000-3499: Organic gases on other solid supports
3500-3999: Organic gases on other samplers
4000-4999: Organic gases on diffusive samplers (e.g., liquids, direct-reading)
5000-5999: Organic aerosols
6000-6999: Inorganic gases
7000-7999: Inorganic aerosols
8000-8999: Biological samples
9000-9999: Bulk samples.
There are two sets of OSHA methods that can be accessed on the Internet at
http://www.osha.gov/dts/sltc/methods/. The first is OSHA's Analytical Methods
Manual (2nd edition, Parts I and II, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety
and health Administration, Salt Lake City, Utah, January 1990). OSHA has also a
list of partially validated methods in the IMIS (integrated management information
system) series, which is also available in printed form or CD-ROM (OSHA
Chemical Sampling Information Database, 1997, OSHA Analytical Laboratory, Salt
Lake City, Utah). Examples of OSHA methods and numbers are 7048 for cadmium
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