Occupational Exposure Of Olfactometric Examiners: Possible Solutions For The Risk Assessment

The aim of this paper is the definition of a new theoretical method for the evaluation of occupational exposure risk for workers involved in dynamic olfactometry. These workers, also called panellists, can be exposed to hazardous pollutants potentially present in odourous mixtures. Despite the relevance of this topic, in the regulation and the scientific literature, a standardized method to evaluate the panellists’ occupational is not provided. Therefore, this work aims to suggest practical solutions for the risk assessment of olfactometric workers. The proposed approach is based on the quantification of non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic risk for panellists’, based on the evaluation of hazard indexes (HIs) and the inhalation risks (IRs) for the odorous mixtures. In addition, this approach aims to overcome the critical aspects observed in the application of the available literature models to real odorous samples. In particular, the absence of a clear definition of occupational exposure concentration and the occurence of compounds without a toxicological threshold in the mixture represents a problem of the available assessment models. Therefore, this study proposes a selection of the most appropriate reference values for each pollutant in a real odorous sample. This implementation allows to calculate, in a robust manner, the minimum dilution value to be adopted during the analysis of odorous compounds.