Known as an ardent supporter of more protective chemical exposure standards based on science-based evidence, his research on such chemicals as butadiene, isoprene, glycol esters, and drinking water disinfection by-products has furthered our understanding of their toxicity potential to populations.
"The industry offered concrete suggestions to the Mine Safety and Health Administration during the agency's rule-making proceeding on a new dust standard," he says, specifically calling for mandatory participation of all coal miners in the NIOSH surveillance program and adoption of a hierarchy of progressively more protective controls to reduce miners' exposure to respirable dust.
The report from the 2013 World Health Organization Meetings on the Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality would seemingly support this return to a more protective 10%% value, "Based on exposure patterns, it may be necessary to revisit the allocation factor used in the derivation of the WHO GV [guideline value] for nickel"; however, the "time frame [for this reevaluation is] unknown" [ 3].
For example, if agricultural workers are informed about the risks of pesticide exposure, they may share this information with their peers, who may take steps to reduce their exposure, such as wearing more protective clothing.
It can also provide participants with opportunities to collectively leverage results to support advocacy that promotes broader biomonitoring efforts to fully understand population variability in exposures, or interventions that promote more protective regulation or toxics use reduction.
Exposure standards that rest on such estimates will be more protective for the subgroup of children whose social ecology has rendered them relatively insensitive to the adverse effects of neurotoxicant exposure, but less, perhaps even insufficiently, protective for the subgroup of children whose social ecology has rendered them more sensitive.
Such studies may aid in the development of more protective standards for sensitive individuals to occupational and public exposures to carcinogens such as benzene.
If so, it would be more protective of public health to replace the default 20%% allocation for nickel exposure from drinking water with the peer-reviewed 10%% allocation.
We used this conservative or more protective selection method because the highest results provide information regarding levels of exposure to biologically available lead.
