2011 12 Bohs Nvva Sampling Strategy Guidance
2011 12 Bohs Nvva Sampling Strategy Guidance
Contents
Preface: What is this document for?
Introduction:
SUMMARY
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Appendix 1.
Amendment history
3
In the public consultation on a draft, many other people made major and valuable comments which
led to this revised version, and the working group thanks them. Also, particularly important
contributions came from Andrew Garrod (formerly of the British Health and Safety Executive),
Jrme Lavou (of the University of Montreal), Huib Arts, and Margreet Sturm
From past experience, this document is likely to require fairly frequent revision to cope with
improved understanding of the statistics of workplace exposure and the best strategy for
measurement. We hope however that it will be useful contribution at the moment and a good basis
for future development.
For BOHS:
Trevor Ogden (co-chair)
Adrian Hirst
John Ingle
Andrew Kennedy
Martie van Tongeren
For NVvA:
Hans Kromhout (co-chair)
Kees Hommes
Joost van Rooij
Theo Scheffers
Erik Tielemans
Introduction
Design and operate processes and activities to minimise emission, release and spread of
substances hazardous to health.
Take into account all relevant routes of exposure inhalation, skin absorption and ingestion
when developing control measures.
Choose the most effective and reliable control options which minimise the escape and
spread of substances hazardous to health.
Check and review regularly all elements of control measures for their continuing
effectiveness.
Inform and train all employees on the hazards and risks from the substances they work with,
and use of control measures.
Ensure that the control measures for substances do not introduce some other sort of risk.
Applying these principles properly is often a skilled business. National occupational hygiene
associations will usually advise on where to find competent help. For a list of associations, see the
International Occupational Hygiene Association website http://www.ioha.net/ . In Britain the British
Occupational Hygiene Society maintains a list of consultancies with qualified and experienced
occupational hygienists who can advise on this, at http://www.bohs.org/OHServices-directory/, and
in the Netherlands contact NVvA at [email protected]. Using a consultant may be much
cheaper and more successful than installing expensive and possibly ineffective control equipment.
An enforcement agency will usually look at the whole of the control procedures together. Applying
this guidance will enable the employer or hygienist to demonstrate that exposure limits are
7
probably complied with, but, as well as looking at the numbers, an enforcer is likely to ask: (1) are
engineering methods working?; (2) are engineering controls and other procedures maintained?; (3)
are there weaknesses in the way good practice is complied with? As explained in this guidance,
statistical fluctuations may lead to occasional measurements above the exposure limits even under
good overall control, but an enforcer will generally pay more attention to the answers to these
questions about good control than to statistical outliers.
This guidance is about finding out whether exposures comply with exposure limits. The guidance
shows that doing this thoroughly enough to be fairly certain of the answer requires much more
measurement than is usually done in a quick hygiene survey. There is no point in doing this unless
proper attention is also paid to good control practice.
Summary
The aim is to provide hygienists and employers with guidance on testing compliance with 8-hr
occupational exposure limits (OELs) for airborne substances. It is assumed that a general workplace
survey has been done, resulting in a need to test exposure against an OEL..
The problem is that OELs are usually defined as sharp boundaries that must not be exceeded, but
the variability of exposure means that occasional high results occur even where the exposure is
generally well controlled. The guidance assumes that an OEL may be regarded as complied with if
the probability of exposure exceeding the OEL is <5%, always remembering that EU law requires
that effective control measures are applied whether or not the OEL is complied with.
The method has five steps.
(1) Divide the workforce into
similarly exposed groups (SEGs).
(2) Take 3 representative personal
exposure measurements from
random workers in the SEG. If all
three exposures are <0.1xOEL, it can
be assumed that the OEL is complied
with. If at this stage or any later one
any result is >OEL, the OEL is not
complied with.
(3) Do a group compliance test. Take
at least 6 more samples from the
SEG, at least 2 per worker from
workers picked at random. Use all 9
(or more) samples to apply a test
which establishes, with 70%
confidence, that there is <5%
probability of any random exposure
in the SEG being >OEL.
(4) Do an analysis of variance on the
9 (or more) results to establish
whether the between-worker variance is >0.2 x total variance. If it is, then step 5 must be added.
(5) Analyse the 9 (or more) results to do an individual compliance test. There should be <20%
probability that any individual in the SEG has >5% of exposures > OEL.
If the OEL is not complied with, further control measures should be applied. If the OEL is complied
with, a periodic monitoring programme should be started, with frequency depending on the test
results.
An appendix gives examples of the necessary calculations in Microsoft Excel.
Three shortcut methods and their limitations are discussed.
9
Chapter 1.
Preliminary considerations
As explained in Section 3.2, the information gained in the survey should be useful in forming
similarly exposed groups (SEGs) at the stage of determining compliance with the OELs.
11
Chapter 2
The problem of variability, and the place of this guidance
This is related to the familar bell-shaped normal curve if the horizontal axes in Figs 1 and 2 were plotted as
the logarithms of the concentration, the distribution would look like a normal curve .
12
if the distribution is really lognormal then the fitted curve gives a better estimate of what is likely to
happen at the 95th percentile than our unprocessed measurements.
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Exposure mg/m3
Exposure mg/m3
Fig 2. Log-normal curve fitted to the data13in Fig 1 using the AIHA
tool IHSTAT
14
Exposure mg/m3
Fig 3. The lognormal distribution fitted by IHSTAT to seven
measurements taken at random from the 26 used to produce Fig 2.
15
Number of samples
10
Worker 1.
Mean 0.62 mg/m3 95th centile 1.38
mg/m3
8
6
4
2
0
Exposure mg/m3
Number of samples
Worker 2.
8
6
4
2
0
Exposure mg/m3
Number of samples
12
10
Worker 3.
Mean 0.54 mg/m3; 95th centile 1.28
mg/m3
8
6
4
2
0
Exposure mg/m3
16
17
Chapter 3.
Recommended method of measuring compliance
3.1 Principles
The method in this chapter should only be applied and considered along with good control practice,
as outlined in the Introduction to this guidance.
Almost all workplace occupational exposure limits (OELs) are defined as either 8-hr mean levels or
short-term (usually 15 minutes) levels, and apply to personal exposure, ie exposure measured with
equipment carried by the worker which samples contaminants from air near the nose and mouth.
The procedures in this chapter describe how to compare measurements with 8-hr (shift) OELs.
Sources such as Cherrie et al. (2010) and AIHA (2006) describe how to take valid samples. For
comparison with the OEL, all significant exposure periods during the shift should be included in the
sample. For comparison with the OEL, the amount of the material collected should be divided by the
volume of air that would have been collected if the sampling had continued for 8 hr. More details
and examples of this sort of calculation are given in Annex B of EN 689 (CEN, 1995). References to
exposure measurements in this chapter mean shift-length average exposures calculated in this way.
As explained in chapter 2, compliance tests are often applied to similarly exposed groups (SEGs), but
workers who are doing the same job are often unexpectedly found to have different exposure
patterns. In this guidance we therefore test the SEG for compliance with the OEL, and, if there is
evidence that different SEG members have different exposures, we test individual compliance. The
two measures used are as follows.
Group compliance. The group complies if, with 70% confidence, <5% of the exposures in the SEG
exceed the OEL.
Individual compliance. The SEG complies in terms of individual exposure if there is <20% probability
that any individual has >5% of his or her exposures exceeding the OEL.
The method has five stages: selection of similarly exposed groups (section 3.2), a screening test (3.3),
a group compliance test (3.4), and an individual compliance test (3.6) if an analysis of variance (3.5)
shows that differences between individual exposure patterns makes this desirable. Fig 5 is a
flowchart illustrating the process. Calculation methods are illustrated in Appendix 1.
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Form SEG
(Section 3.2)
Take 3 samples
(Section 3.3)
Screening test
Improve
controls
Yes
No
Are any of
the three > OEL?
(Section 3.3)
No
Yes
No
Is the group
compliance test passed?
(Section 3.4)
No
Individual
compliance
Is the
test
individual compliance
test passed?
(Section 3.6)
Are between-worker
differences important?
(Section 3.5)
Yes
Test individual compliance
(Section 3.6)
Yes
Routine monitoring
(reassessment)
(Section 3.8)
No
terminated. However, if there are reasons to believe that the result is invalid for some reasons, it
should be discarded and the group compliance test should be done.
This screening test is taken with slight modification from Annex 1 of the French regulatory scheme
(France, 2009), which has been validated by the Institut National de Recherce et de Scurit (see
INRS, 2008).
(equation 1)
log sG = { * (log a1 log MG)2 + (log a2 log MG)2 + (log a3 log MG)2 ... + (log an Log MG)2] / (n-1) }
(2)
These can be worked out using a scientific calculator; or the method in Appendix 1 can be applied.
We then calculate the parameter U (also shown in Appendix 1)
U = [ log (OEL) log MG ] / log sG
(3)
U is then compared with the limiting values given in Table 1. If U is less than the limiting value for
the number of exposures given, the OEL is not complied with.
21
Table 1. Limiting values of U. The OEL is not complied with if U calculated from equation (3) is less
than the limiting value given here. Limiting values of U for other sample numbers are given in
Annex 2 of France (2009).
Number of exposure measurements
Limiting value of U
2.035
10
2.005
11
1.981
12
1.961
13
1.944
14
1.929
15
1.917
If the OEL is complied with by the group compliance test, it is necessary to perform an analysis of
variance (section 3.5) to decide whether individual compliance should be tested.
(The group compliance test is taken from France (2009). It assumes that the exposures are lognormally distributed, and uses the estimates of the geometric mean and the geometric standard
deviation to test whether we can be sure, with 70% confidence, that less than 5% of the exposures
are above the OEL.)
can be used to test whether the between-worker contribution to variance is significant at the 5%
level, but Lavous simulations have found that this does not add anything to the 20% test.)
(4)
from Hewett (2005), Appendix A, and then calculating the fraction of the distribution which lies
above this value. By our definition (section 3.1) our individual compliance criterion is met if this
fraction is <0.2.
This procedure assumes that the logarithms of the exposures of each worker are normally
distributed (ie that their exposures are log-normally distributed) and that the geometric means of
the exposures of the individual workers are also log-normally distributed. sw2 and sb2 are
respectively the within-and between-worker variances of the distributions of logged values. The
calculation of this is illustrated in Appendix 1 to this guidance, using Microsoft Excel.
It might be thought that we need to be sure that no workers are in this position, not just <20%, but
because the test is actually applied to log-normal distributions fitted to the exposure measurements,
the result of this calculation is never zero. Another way of expressing our individual compliance
criterion is that >80% of the SEG members have at least 95% of their exposures < OEL.
It should be noted that in sections 3.5 and 3.6 we have applied two completely different tests
involving 20% thresholds, which should not be confused. In section 3.5 we said that individual
compliance should be tested if between-worker variance > 20%, and in this section we have said that
<20% of individuals should have >5% of exposures >OEL.
Other measures have been used as measures of compliance, for example the probability of
overexposure (Kromhout et al., 2005), defined as the chance that a random workers long-term
mean exceeds the OEL. This has a logic in health terms for substances whose effect is due to longterm cumulative exposure, but because almost all workplace OELs are defined in terms of 8-hr or
15-min exposure, we have not used overexposure here.
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3.8 Reassessment
A survey which establishes that the OELs are complied with should be followed by occasional
reassessment, and if possible a programme for this should be planned and agreed with management
or the responsible authority at the end of the initial survey. Such a programme is called periodic
measurements by EN689 (CEN, 1995) and reassessment by AIHA (2006).
A reassessment programme should have the general aim of ensuring that control remains
satisfactory, and checking compliance with the OEL will be part of this. The programme should
therefore take into account changes in the factors affecting exposure, including changes in process,
substances, ways of organising work such as shift patterns, and substantial changes in personnel.
However, those involved may be unaware of changes affecting exposure, such as gradual
deterioration in ventilation equipment, or subtle changes in ways of working, so there should be an
agreed programme to reassess compliance with the OEL even in the absence of obvious change.
24
The interval for reassessment depends mainly on professional judgement if there are no obvious
signs of change, and will depend upon the industry and the processes involved. AIHA (2006), CEN
(1995), and France (2009) all make somewhat different recommendations, and from these the
following intervals for reassessing compliance with OELs should be considered. The geometric mean
(GM) is calculated for the results obtained in sections 3.3 and 3.4, plus any later relevant results.
GM <0.1 OEL
0.1 OEL < GM < 0.25 x OEL
0.25 OEL <GM< 0.5 OEL
0.5 OEL <GM
2 yr
1 yr
6 months
3 months
However, these intervals should be interpreted taking into account the following.
Effective control measures should be applied by those responsible for the workplace at all
times, bearing in mind that in the European Union and many other jurisdictions the law
requires effective control as well as compliance with OELs. Those responsible for the
workplace must therefore be aware of the relevant important measures.
The intervals will depend on the hazard: extra care should be taken if carcinogens,
mutagens, or reproductively toxic materials are present, or if for there are substances for
which there is risk of serious or permanent injury at levels only a little way above the OEL.
On the other hand longer intervals between reassessing compliance with the OELs may be
justified if the workplace is under supervision of a professional hygienist, and there are
stable continuous processes with high levels of engineering control and well defined working
processes with high quality control regimes, with change concentrated mainly in well
defined periods such as controlled maintenance.
These uncertainties underline the importance of the use of qualified and experienced occupational
hygienists in making this sort of judgement (see Introduction).
The hygienist may also wish to look again at sources of exposure and efficiency of control measures,
using direct-reading instruments for example. However, discussion of control measures is beyond
the scope of this guidance see the summary in the Introduction to this document.
26
Chapter 4.
Shortcuts and their limitations
4.1 Shortcut 1: Take a few samples from the most exposed worker and use
evaluation software
Advantage
Evaluation software (see section 2.2) can be used to very roughly quantify the exposure in relation to
the OEL from a small number of samples.
Limitation
This depends on identifying the most-exposed workers, and failing to do so means that the approach
gives false confidence. The approach does not give the overall picture that is obtained by calculating
the group and individual compliances. Moreover any conclusions about relation of individual
exposures to the OEL are very uncertain unless many measurements are taken, in which case the
shortcut loses its point.
Outline
It is of course possible simply to take a small number of samples and enter them into software such
as IHSTAT or HYGINIST see section 2.2. This can be done without going through the process in
chapter 3. Bearing in mind that OELs apply to all workers, the highest-exposed workers in a SEG
should be identified and included, perhaps using a direct-reading instrument to see where the
strongest sources are. Then the software can be used to estimate the distribution of exposures for
each worker who might be at significant risk of exceeding the OEL. But the above limitations make
the results very uncertain.
4.2 Shortcut 2. Taking a few samples and seeing if they are < OEL/3
Advantage
The principle appears in guidance from the British Health and Safety Executive (HSE, 2006). Provided
that a dozen or more samples are taken on the most exposed workers, that the results are
lognormally distributed, and that at least three quarters are below one-third of the OEL, the method
will work.
Limitations
Although this rule was seen as helpful when published, later work shows that it is not a shortcut,
because to give a reasonably reliable result it needs as many samples as the more statistically valid
tests in Chapter 3. As with shortcut 1, it depends on identifying the most-exposed workers, and
failing to do so means that the approach gives false confidence. The approach does not give the
overall picture that is obtained by calculating the group and individual compliances.
27
Outline
From the point of view of dealing with enforcement authorities, this approach has the practical
advantage of being mentioned in the British Health and Safety Executives COSHH Essentials
guidance sheet on air sampling, which advises employers, If the results for a given task are below
one third of the exposure limit, your controls are probably good enough (HSE, 2006). At first sight
this looks like a useful rule of thumb. It is true that if the exposures are lognormally distributed with
a geometric standard deviation (GSD) of 2.5, then if 75% of exposures are less than one-third of the
OEL only about 3% will be above the OEL. (A GSD of 2.5 is close to the median found by Kromhout et
al. (1993), for SEGs defined by workplace and job title. More precisely-defined SEGs would have
lower GSDs and a smaller percentage above the OEL if this rule were applied.)
The flaw with HSE (2006) is that it gives no guidance on how many samples should be taken, and the
monitoring-averse employer may take as few as possible. Three results of say 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 give
poor confidence of compliance with an OEL of 1.0. Putting these figures in IHSTAT (see section 2.2)
shows that there is more than a 30% chance that 5% of the distribution lies above the OEL. IHSTAT
can be used to explore the effect of more samples, and by the time a dozen samples have been
obtained with three-quarters below one-third of the OEL, then there is a high degree of confidence
that the OEL is complied with. This assumes that the log-normal assumption is met and that the
most exposed workers have been identified and that it is their exposure that is measured.
But if that many samples are taken, it is no longer a shortcut: the tests in Chapter 3 can be used.
28
Exposure category
Statistical interpretation
Cat 1
Cat 2
Cat 3
Cat 4
Cat 5
(95th percentile means the upper 95th percentile of the exposure distribution)
The method involves the hygienist using professional judgment and experience to estimate the
fraction of exposures which would be expected to fall in each category (the prior distribution), and
then taking some measurements and putting them in the categories to form a likelihood distribution.
Software is available which combines these using Bayesian methods to form a posterior distribution.
If the professional judgement is good, this method of testing and refinement by measurements
should give a good picture of reality with relatively few measurements. Also, Logan et al (2009) have
shown that the professional judgement can be improved by systematic feedback of results.
Applied as described by Ramachandran (2008), and combined with examination of control practice
as outlined in the Introduction, this may be a powerful method of approaching exposure in the
workplace. Also, if the outcome of this process is, say, < 5% of the posterior distribution in Category
5, then we can have reasonable confidence that the OEL is complied with. The problem for our
purpose is that an enforcer may not regard professional judgement as acceptable evidence, and
without this component the method becomes similar to Shortcut 1 above. However, in a
preliminary review of exposures this could be an efficient method of establishing which SEGs are
likely to have difficulty complying with the OEL.
For those who wish to try it, freeware can be downloaded from the Exposure Assessment Solutions
website http://www.oesh.com . Being freeware, this is not supported and no liability is accepted,
and the user does so at their own risk. This applies also to the following instructions.
Go to http://www.oesh.com and click the software downloads link, and then IH DataAnalyst
Lite. You have to register.
When you have installed and open the programme, a window opens. Click the BDA Initial
Rating tab, check "Custom Professional Judgement Prior", and you can then enter in the
boxes the estimated probabilities of exposures being the above AIHA categories.
Then, when measurements are available, go to the Data tab, enter an OEL, and, in the Conc
column, enter the measured exposures.
Then click the BDA Charts tab. This displays (top) the prior distribution that you estimated,
(middle) the likelihood distribution calculated by the programme from the data you entered,
and (bottom) the Bayesian combination of these as the posterior distribution.
29
A1.1 SPEED
The Institute of Risk Assessment Sciences at the University of Utrecht and collaborators have
developed a programme called SPEED which does the sort of calculations necessary. This is available
from http://www.iras.uu.nl/iras_speed.php . At the time of writing, the only available version is
based on earlier versions of Microsoft Excel, and does not work with later versions. A new version of
SPEED is being written, which is based on R, and this should make it independent of the version of
Excel or Windows.
When the new version of SPEED becomes available, it is expected to be easier to operate than the
Excel version given below, and being simpler to operate there should be less chance of making a
mistake. However, most hygienists or employers will have Excel, or the OpenOffice equivalent, and
many organisations are reluctant to allow third-party software. An Excel route to the calculation is
therefore given. This will also enable those interested to see how the parameters are derived.
If any of the results are below the level of quantification LoQ, see section 3.7.
So the first step is to type in the data on a spreadsheet workbook. Fig A1 shows the example we will
use.
Fig A1 The data personal exposures to cotton dust for three staff.
The next step is to calculate the natural logarithm of each of these values. As explained in the main
text, the data are assumed to be lognormally distributed, so we have to work with the logged values,
because the analysis works with values that are normally distributed. The process is shown in Fig A2.
We have prepared headings for the table of the log values to the right of the original data, and now
use an Excel maths function, typing =LN(C5) in cell H5. This produces in H5 the natural log of the
value in cell C5.
Throughout this appendix, we will be using natural logarithms, designated LN in Excel, not
logarithms to the base 10. For brevity, we often refer to the logarithm of a value as the logged
value. The number of decimal places displayed in each cell depends on setting under the Home tab,
and in the example cells H5 to J8 are set to display two decimal places, but Excel stores numbers to
many more decimal places and uses them in calculation.2
After the Figs in this Appendix were made, it was found that simulated measurements had been entered in
cells D7, D8, and E8 to more decimal places than the two displayed here. This means that if the reader tries to
reproduce this example, some of the calculations will give different numbers in the third or later decimal
places from those in the Figs. This has no effect, but is mentioned in case it causes confusion.
31
32
which calls up the Excel averaging function, and using the mouse to select the cells H5 to J8, which
contain the values we want to average. If we then hit the return key the average of these logged
values is put into cell H10, as required. We have also typed reminder labels into G10 and G11 for the
functions we are calculating. The log of the geometric mean, which we have just calculated, is equal
to the mean of the logged exposure values. This follows from the definition of the geometric mean.
As shown in Section 3.4 equation 2, log sG is the standard deviation of the logged values, and we put
that in cell H11 by typing
=stdev(
in that cell and again selecting cells H5 to J8 and hitting return. The outcome is shown in Fig A5.
34
Having reached a compliance decision by the group compliance test, we now have to perform an
analysis of variance to test individual compliance.
Then we check the button against Output Range, and in the that slot we type the location of the top
left hand of the area where we would like the results to be displayed. In this case, we choose cell
M13 (Fig A9). (Instead of typing, we can click in the Output Range slot, and then click in cell M13.)
Now we are ready to click OK, and the results of the Analysis of Variance are displayed (Fig A10).
Fig A9. Selecting the Output Range the place where the results will be displayed.
For our purpose we only need some of the results in the analysis of variance (ANOVA) table. (A full
explanation of it can be found in any statistics textbook, for example Wonnacott and Wonnacott,
1990.) We will use them to calculate the within-worker and between-worker variances. For
explanation of the calculations, see Rappaport and Kupper (2008), p 47.
37
Fig A10 The results of the Analysis of Variance. (We have broadened column M so that the titles of
the rows in the ANOVA are completely visible)
38
39
(A1)
(A2)
Our example is rather more complicated, and probably more realistic, because we could not get all
the people we wished to measure present on every shift. In this case, n0 is given by
(A3)
where N is the total number of measurements, k the number of people sampled, and ni is the
number of exposure measurements made of the ith person (Rappaport and Kupper, 2008, p 47). The
factor
is the sum of the squares of the number of samples taken for the individual workers.
40
In our example, we have 4 measurements for Joe, 4 for Greg, and 2 for Chloe, so
22.
= 42 + 4 2 +
Fig A13. Calculating the weighted equivalent number of measurements per person, n0
In Fig A13, we have for clarity put into cells Q3 to Q7 the names of variables on the right hand side
of equation A3, and in cells R3 to R7 we have put their values. Then in cell R8 we have calculated the
value of n0 , by typing in the cell the formula which appears in the formula line at the top, which is a
transcription of equation A3, calling up the values in cells R3 to R7.
We can now use equation A2 to calculate the between-person variance sb2, remembering that the
between-worker mean square MSB is in the ANOVA table, and using the value of n0 that we have
just calculated. We will put the between-worker variance sb2 in cell O5, using Excel to do the
calculation, and then put its square root, the between-worker standard deviation, in O6, with the
appropriate labels in N5 and N6 (Figs A14a and A14b)
Because we are only estimating the variances from a limited number of measurements, it sometimes
happens that our estimate of MSB will be less than our estimate of the within-worker variance (MSB
< sw2 ), so that the calculation in Fig A14a results in a negative value for the estimate of the
between-worker variance sb2. What this means is that the true value of the between-worker
variance is probably small; we are only estimating the parameter and our estimate happens to have
come out negative. It is conventional in such a case to set it to zero (Rappaport and Kupper, 2008,
p46).
41
Fig. Calculation of the between-worker variance and standard deviation in cells O5 and O6
A1.2.6 Is the individual compliance test needed in this case?
As explained in section 3.6, individual compliance should be tested if the between-worker variance is
more than 20% of the total variance (sb2 > 0.2 s2), because this indicates that differences in exposure
42
patterns of the individuals in the SEG may be important, so that some individuals in the group may
have exposures exceeding the exposure limit even though the group as a whole is complying.
The total variance is the sum of the between-worker and within worker variances. In Fig A15 this
has been calculated in cell O7. It can be seen that the between-worker variance in cell O5 (0.057
approximately) is less than 20% of the total variance in O7 (0.315), and therefore under our
suggested rule there is no need to proceed to test individual compliance. (Although for clarity we
have calculated the total variance, this was not really necessary. The way we calculated total
variance makes it clear that the test sb2 < 0.2 s2 is equivalent to sb2 < 0.25 sw2 , which can be seen
by comparing cells O5 and O3 in Fig A14b.)
Although in this example we do not need to test individual compliance, we will illustrate the
calculation.
Fig A16 we have calculated this new estimate of the mean of the logs in cell O8 and labelled it M in
N8.
[ log(OEL) - ( M + 1.645 sw ) ] / sb
(A4)
It will be seen that instead of the overall standard deviation s, we are now using the within- and
between-worker standard deviations which we calculated above. We put this in cell O9, with the
label in N9.
We use H to estimate the fraction of workers in the SEG having 95th percentiles greater than the OEL,
called here individual exceedance. We do this using the Excel statistical function NORMSDIST. (This
must be typed with care, as there is another Excel function NORMDIST which we do not want.) Fig
45
A18 shows this calculated in cell O10, with a label in M10 as usual. The formula line at the top of Fig
A18 shows what was actually typed in O10.
Once again, we draw attention to the explanation in the Introduction to this guidance that European
law requires effective control, and that compliance with the OEL is not enough.
47
References
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Amendment history
20 Dec 2011
Preface.
Section 2.2.
Sections 2.5 and 3.6
51