[Recent prevention strategies and occupational risk analysis: Control Banding and Sobane].

Employers are responsible for the prevention of risks and must provide for the safety and health of their workers. They are obliged to apply the general principles of prevention: to avoid, where possible, any risk; to characterize and hence to estimate residual risks; to eliminate risks at the source; to adjust jobs to the needs of workers and not workers to the jobs. When we pass to the practical performance of these shared principles we introduce many problems: problems concerning terminology; problems in estimating the nature of the risks that are faced; coordination problems between the subjects that preside over prevention; problems arising from the different typology of the companies investigated In order to answer these questions the "Industrial Hygienists" have long since created various strategies for the prevention and control of risks. Among different models the methods Control Banding and Sobane-Deparis are undoubtedly the most promising. Control Banding is designed to assist especially Small and Medium Enterprises in complying with the chemical safety regulations, the scheme uses the R phrases that in Europe must be assigned to potentially harmful chemicals by the manufacturer of the chemical. R phrases describe the most important harmful effects of a chemical and have been adopted in many non European countries also. The combination of the hazard classification of the chemical and assessment of the exposure potential will allow understanding of the level of risk thus leading the person carrying out the assessment to an appropriate control method. Occupational hygienists with experience of assessing occupational exposure to chemicals agreed parameters that could be used to give reasonable indications of exposure potential. One of them is quantity being used and three categories--small, medium and large--are defined. The likelihood of the chemical becoming airborne has been addressed by defining solids according to levels of dustiness and liquids according to volatility. A simple graph that uses the boiling point of the chemical and the process operating temperature assigns the chemical a high, medium or low volatility rating. The user now has enough information to identify the control approach required to adequately reduce exposures to the chemical Occupational hygienists agreed on three broad control approaches: General Ventilation; Engineering Control; Containment. However it is recognised that in some cases specialist advice will be needed. The user takes the hazard group, quantity and level of dustiness/volatility and matches them to a control approach using a simple table. The controls are described in control guidance sheets, which comprise both general information and, for commonly performed tasks, more specific advice. The second section of the document describes a risk-prevention strategy, called SOBANE, in four levels. These four levels are: screening, where the risk factors are detected by the workers and their management, and obvious solutions are implemented; observation, where the remaining problems are studied in more detail, one by one, and the reasons and the solutions are discussed in detail; analysis, where, when necessary, an occupational health (OH) practitioner is called upon to carry out appropriate measurements to develop specific solutions; expertise, where, in very sophisticated and rare cases, the assistance of an expert is called upon to solve a particular problem. The method for the participatory screening of the risks, Deparis, is proposed for the first level screening of the SOBANE strategy. The aim of Sobane strategy is to make risk prevention faster, more cost effective, and more effective in coordinating the contributions of the workers themselves, their management, the internal and external OH practitioners and the experts.