What is a measure of the probability and severity of a hazard to harm human health property or the environment?

There are a number of concepts and definitions used in human health risk assessment. Key definitions include ‘health hazard’, ‘health risk’ and ‘exposure’.

Health hazard

A hazard is something that has the potential to cause harm – it could be a biological substance, or a chemical, or something with a particular physical property, or an activity.

A hazard cannot potentially cause harm unless people or a section of the environment is exposed to that hazard.

A health hazard is therefore something that has the potential to cause harm to the health of individuals, groups of people or the broader community.

Health risk

A risk is the probability (or likelihood) that a hazard will cause harm.

A health risk is therefore the probability (or likelihood) that exposure to a health hazard will cause harm.

Exposure

Exposure is the amount (sometimes referred to as ‘the dose’) or concentration (ie amount of a health hazard in air, soil or water etc) in contact with or taken up into the body over a known length of time.

Human health risk assessment

Human health risk assessment is a way of assessing the potential impact of a hazard on the health of a person, group of people or a community. Factual, technical information is used to understand the potential health effects.

Each human health risk assessment is unique to the situation and population being assessed. The population in focus may be a community or specific groups within a community such as workers, children, older people or those with particular health conditions such as asthma.

The five general steps in the human health risk assessment process are:

1. Issue identification: what is the identified problem or situation?
2. Hazard assessment: what are the possible adverse health effects associated with the identified hazards of potential health concern?
3. Understand the dose-response relationship(s): what is the dose response relationship for each identified adverse health effect? What studies are used to provide this information?
4. Exposure assessment: develop a site or situation model including pathways connecting sources of each hazard to people; collect and analyse data about each hazard, e.g. assess/sample the amount in air, water or soil; identify populations that may be affected and how they may be exposed to each hazard.
5. Characterise the risk: this step analyses the above information to estimate the size and nature of either past, current or future health risks for people, including communities.

Community and stakeholder consultation occur as part of the human health risk assessment process.

The human health risk assessment is important as it informs the risk management stage. This includes recommended advice or actions (if required) to ensure that human health is protected. Risk communication occurs in the risk management stage.

Human health risk assessment for environmental exposures

Environmental Health is defined as those aspects of human health determined by physical, chemical, biological and social factors in the environment. Environmental health practice covers the assessment, correction, control and prevention of environmental factors that can adversely affect health, as well as the enhancement of those aspects of the environment that can improve human health.

An environmental health risk assessment is a type of human health risk assessment that looks at the potential impacts of hazards in the environment on the health of people: - usually in defined groups or the broader community.

The Australian approach for environmental health risk assessment is described in the enHealth publication, Environmental Health Risk Assessment: - Guidelines for assessing human health risks from environmental hazards 2012, available from the Australian Department of Health website .

Who does human health risk assessments?

People who do human health risk assessments generally have science, engineering or medical qualifications and usually experience relevant to the issue or situation being investigated.

Human health risk assessors work with experts in toxicology, epidemiology and chemistry, particularly when the assessment involves hazardous materials, including chemicals.

Human health risk assessors are trained to understand each step of the risk assessment process and to analyse a problem rationally. They break the assessment into smaller parts and solve each part of the issue with reason and logic, like solving a puzzle. The puzzle is then reassembled into the overall understanding of the size and nature of either past, current or future risks to human health.

Depending on the issue, government departments and agencies may undertake a human health risk assessment or engage an independent expert to do this work.

In some cases, a government department or agency may direct a person or business owner to conduct a human health risk assessment at their own cost. This may include an additional peer review process to ensure that the findings are independent and accurate.

India has the fourth largest iron ore reserves in the world after Russia, Brazil, and Australia.[1] As per the survey conducted by the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) in April 2000, India had 9919 million tonnes of recoverable reserves of haematite and 3546 million tonnes of magnetite.[1]

As good quality iron ore deposits are depleting very fast, beneficiation technologies have to be adopted to meet iron ore demand. Agglomeration technologies such as pelletization/sintering have to be added to steel plant so that concentrates can be used as feed material.[1]

Pelletization plants beneficiate fines and transform the unusable low grade fines into an easily consumable feed for blast furnaces.[1] The present production capacity of pelletization in eastern region is 28.7 MMT, which will increase to 40.7 MMT in the coming time after commissioning of about 9 number of units, which are at various stages of commissioning.[1] With the growing numbers of pelletization plants, various impacts on environment and health will rise.

A critical part of any Occupational Health and Safety program is the identification, assessment, elimination and/or the control of hazards in the workplace. Risk assessment is the process of evaluation of the risks arising from a hazard, taking into account the adequacy of any existing controls and deciding whether or not the risks is acceptable.[2] It is impossible to eliminate all hazards, so the goal is to eliminate and/or control the hazards with critical and high potential risk to the lowest reasonable risk level so as to protect workers from harm.

Section 2 (cb) of the Indian Factories Act, 1948, defines hazardous process as follows:

“Hazardous process” means any process or activity in relation to an industry specified in the First Schedule where, unless special care is taken, raw materials used therein or the intermediate or finished products, by-products, wastes, or effluents thereof would:

1. Cause material impairment to the health of the persons engaged in or connected therewith, or

2. Result in the pollution of the general environment.[3]

Hazard means a source or a situation with a potential for harm in terms of human injury or ill health, damage to property, damage to the environment, or a combination of these.[4]

Hazard identification means the identification of undesired events that lead to the materialization of the hazard and the mechanism by which those undesired events could occur.[4]

Risk is, at minimum, a two-dimensional concept involving (1) the possibility of an adverse outcome, and (2) uncertainty over the occurrence, timing, or magnitude of that adverse outcome.[5] If either attribute is absent, then there is no risk.[5]

Risk assessment is a systematic process for describing and quantifying the risks associated with hazardous substances, processes, actions, or events.[5]

Risk assessment method can be defined as any self-contained systematic procedure conducted as part of a risk assessment – that is, any procedure that can be used to help generate a probability distribution for health or environmental consequences.[5]

Hazard Identification Risk Assessment (HIRA) is a process of defining and describing hazards by characterizing their probability, frequency, and severity and evaluating adverse consequences, including potential losses and injuries. A risk assessment that provides the factual basis for activities proposed in the strategy to reduce losses from identified hazards.[6] The ISO Risk Management Principles and Guidelines standardize risk assessment in four parts: risk identification, risk analysis, risk evaluation, and risk treatment. The first step — risk identification — is achieved by identifying all hazards and their subsequent consequences.[7] Local risk assessments must provide sufficient information to enable the jurisdiction to identify and prioritize appropriate mitigation actions to reduce losses from identified hazards.[6]

Hazard control means the process of implementing measures to reduce the risk associated with a hazard.[4]

The occupational health risk assessment shall address the following:

1. The hazards of the process involved in different activities

2. Semi-quantitative evaluation of the possible health and safety effects of failure of controls

3. Engineering and administrative controls applicable to the hazards and their interrelationships, such as appropriate application of detection methodologies to provide early warning of release.

Page 2

Semi quantitative method of risk assessment