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Abstract Approaches to setting up occupational exposure standards for asbestos vary between different countries and agencies. Occupational health professionals working internationally face the need to establish internal target standards for asbestos exposure that would protect workers worldwide. It is especially important for the areas and workplaces where asbestos is present as a naturally occurring contaminant, or as a part of so called “legacy” asbestos, still present in buildings and other objects and products. The talk will present several approaches to setting up the standards for occupational exposure to asbestos and other elongate mineral particles with consideration of the sources and characteristics of the fibrous minerals, size and habit of the fibers, and exposure scenarios. Based on the most recent epidemiological analysis, it will be shown that various exposure standards can be proposed for several major mineral types of asbestos, including chrysotile, crocidolite, amosite, and tremolite. Several case studies will be reviewed to demonstrate the value of the internal occupational exposure standards. The presentation will also cover the situation of setting up standards for emerging types of elongate mineral particles, e.g., erionite, fluoro-edenite, balangeroite, and other. Examples of the exposure reduction programs to achieve the target levels of airborne asbestos concentrations will be presented and discussed.
Korchevskiy et al. (Sat,) studied this question.