Source avec lien : Annals of Work Exposures and Health, 66(4). 10.1093/annweh/wxac016
Alors que les paradigmes de l’hygiène du travail soulignent la valeur des mesures d’exposition, il est largement reconnu que les mesures seules ne sont pas suffisantes pour caractériser et contrôler les expositions professionnelles (Fransman, 2017). Par conséquent, les modèles jouent désormais un rôle important dans l’hygiène du travail, tant au sein des organisations qui doivent gérer la santé et la sécurité au travail de leurs employés que par les organismes de réglementation, au niveau mondial.
While occupational hygiene paradigms stress the value of exposure measurements, it is widely recognized that measurements alone are not adequate to characterize and control occupational exposures (Fransman, 2017). As a result, models have come to play a significant role in occupational hygiene, both within organizations that must manage the occupational health and safety for their employees and by regulatory organizations, globally. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2009) and National Research Council have defined a model as a ‘simplification of reality that is constructed to gain insights into selected attributes of a particular physical, biological, economic, or social system.’ A definition more specific to exposure assessment was provided in a recent glossary of exposure science, adopting the World Health Organization definition of exposure model, ‘A conceptual or mathematical representation of one or more exposure processes’ (Heinemeyer et al., 2021). Both definitions make it clear that models are designed to interrogate—to represent, understand, and answer specific questions about—a system. In occupational hygiene, the system that we are typically interested in is the workplace; the physical, chemical, biological, and social processes in the workplace that determine the frequency and magnitude of workers’ exposures to a hazard.