SERVICES
Industrial Hygiene
Hygienix provides professional industrial hygiene services with its Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) and technicians. We will work with you to anticipate health and safety concerns and design solutions to prevent these risks by acting as your in the field and onsite guardian by applying science to identify and solve health and safety problems. By uniting your organizations levels of management, workers, and all segments of a company Hygienix will reduce risk to ensure the common goal of health and safety. …’if there is a problem’ Hygienix will solve it…
Our industrial hygiene and environmental science staff will use rigorous scientific methods to evaluate and control your workplace hazards. Through evaluation of all jobs, operations, machinery, and work activities at the site. With exposure modeling our CIH can use analytical, predictive techniques to access previous, current, and future exposures through Monte Carlo or deterministic simulations.
Hygienix offers the following Industrial Hygiene services
• Ergonomics: The goal of ergonomics - the study of people at work - is to eliminate injuries and reduce stress associated with bad posture, overuse of muscles, and repeated tasks. While performing an ergonomics evaluation, it’s important to involve workers in the process to ensure tasks are fit to the worker and workers are properly trained on aspects such as how to lift boxes correctly. Ergonomics can be improved through solutions such as changing the chairs or keyboards office workers use, introducing tools to reduce repetitive tasks, or limiting time on certain jobs. Proper ergonomics can help prevent carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, and lower back injuries.
• Noise: Long-term exposure to noise – both wanted and unwanted sound – can lead to hearing loss for workers. Noise issues can be addressed in several ways, including designing a facility to minimize noise, separating workers from noisy machinery as much as possible, and using devices, such as ear muffs or ear plugs, to protect workers. Hygienix can perform a workplace evaluation with sound pressure level meters with octave band analyzers to show levels of noise and provide controls to mitigate hearing loss.
• Temperature: Both high and low temperatures can cause problems for workers. If temperatures are too high, workers are vulnerable to heat stroke or heat exhaustion; heat stroke is a medical emergency that requires immediate attention. Workers should be allowed to slowly adapt to the heat (acclimatization) and drink small amounts of water frequently, and air should be cooled whenever possible. Prolonged exposure to low temperatures can lead to hypothermia or frostbite. Workers should be allowed to wear warm clothing, and take breaks in warmer temperatures when possible. Common sense with most temperature worker-related injuries takes care of most of the problems; however, Hygienix offers a scientific basis for providing worker reductive stress based on environmental and work-related functions.
• Indoor air quality: Indoor air quality can be impacted by many factors, including pollution from machines or tools inside or beneath the building, highway pollution outside the building, dusts from mechanical processes, or gasses. Poor air quality can cause issues ranging from chronic coughs to nausea to severe headaches. Proper ventilation is important to ensure that fresh air is brought into the work area and air filtering in an HVAC system can help remove contaminants from the air. Discovery of the root cause will ensure a safe, healthy working environment and enhanced worker productivity. Hygienix can assist with indoor air quality assessment, development of strategies to mitigate risk, as well as local exhaust ventilation control.
• Chemical exposure: Chemical hazards can take many forms, from liquid to fumes to dusts, and can be absorbed, inhaled, or ingested into a worker’s system. Some common chemicals that can potentially be hazardous are cleaning products, gasoline, and pesticides. Many chemicals can be harmless in small doses, but even some common chemicals can cause symptoms in those who are particularly sensitive, and most chemicals can cause adverse effects in large doses or when proper safety precautions are not taken. These precautions include ventilation, personal hygiene such as hand washing, which can reduce the amount of chemicals absorbed by the skin, and maintaining equipment in order to prevent leaks and breakdowns. Hygienix can provide sampling to determine what concentrations are present allowing workers to remain beneath OSHA/EPA regulations.
• Radiation: There are two types of radiation – non-ionizing radiation and ionizing radiation. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation and laser radiation are the types of non-ionizing radiation most likely to cause safety concerns, usually burns, for workers; UV radiation is a particular problem for outside workers, such as gardeners. Ionizing radiation can cause more considerable health risks for workers, and can be found in settings ranging from health care facilities to nuclear reactors and their support facilities. This type of radiation damages cells, and possible long term effects include cancer and sterility. Exposure to ionizing radiation should be limited as much as possible, and workers should be shielded from radiation by materials such as lead or concrete.
• Biological hazards: Living organisms such as fungi, viruses, and bacteria, can enter the body and cause both acute and chronic infections. Workers who deal with plants or animals and laboratory or medical workers are particularly at risk for biological hazards, but all workers can be at risk for hazards such as mold, and bacteria that cause Legionnaire’s disease. Proper hygiene such as hand washing, ventilation, personal protective equipment such as gloves or respirators, and in certain cases, isolation of the hazard, can all help minimize the risks associated with biological hazards. In doing so, Hygienix can evaluate and eliminate these risks by performing building science assessments with corrective action plans. Hygienix will work with your physician to establish and mitigate risks within your home and/or business to allow you to continue to live a healthy life.
• Eliminating or Controlling Hazards: Once hazardous conditions have been identified there is a systematic approach to eliminating or minimizing the potential hazard. This starts with designing the hazard out of the process or operation, providing local or dilution exhaust ventilation, establishing proper work practices, providing proper personal protective equipment (PPE) and applicable administrative measures.
Optimizing these components of industrial hygiene through monitoring and analyzing hazards and engineering solutions to minimize those hazards will help control potential health risks that impact both workers and your organization. These hazards can cause a wide range of negative outcomes from disease and injury to lost time and reduced productivity in your organization. Understanding the principles of industrial hygiene will help you control these factors more effectively and thus have a healthier, more productive workplace and/or environment.
