124 Functional requirements for a new risk assessment tool: the first step - a new inhalation model to assess exposure to bioaerosols

Within Occupational Hygiene, risk assessments due to exposure to biological agents has received less emphasis compared to risks associated with other hazardous substances. Thus, the tools for hazard inventory, risk assessment, and implementation of control measures for biological agents remain scarce. The COVID-19 pandemic raised awareness on the magnitude of potential health consequences linked to exposure to biological agents also in workplace environments. But concerns should not be limited to infectious biological agents. Non-infectious microorganisms might also impact in workers’ health due to their sensitizing, toxic and even carcinogenic effects. Workers in various sectors may be exposed through aerosols or contact with infected persons or materials that are contaminated with microorganisms. Different qualitative risk assessment tools for biological agents have been developed over the last decades, with differences in their scope, parameters used and results obtained. In order to propose a functional design for the development of a new risk assessment tool related to biological agents, four existing tools were compared to better understand their strengths, limitations and applicability. Based on this comparison, a general structure for a complete new tool was proposed with some key requirements for determining occupational exposure to biological agents. Furthermore, we developed a new qualitative risk assessment model for bioaerosol inhalation created from a source-receptor conceptual model where scores for each parameter were assigned based on literature. The current model has been applied to seven different sectors and tested in more than 120 real workplace scenarios with satisfactory results.