Quantitative Health Risk Assessment of Metals on Surfaces Using the Construction Industry as a Test Environment

Routes of human exposure to hazardous substances include inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. To protect worker health against airborne contaminants numerous occupational exposure limit values (OELVs) have been established by regulatory or health authorities. These limits are airborne concentrations of hazardous substances which are often established as health-based benchmarks according to epidemiological and toxicological evaluations. OELVs have exclusively focused on the inhalation exposure pathway because it has been considered the most important route of exposure (Anderson & Meade 2014; Schneider et al. 1999). In contrast, there is a lack of quantitative exposure limits to assess skin exposures in the workplace. A research gap with respect to the development of health-based skin exposure limits for metals was identified. This thesis addressed two main research questions; (1) What methods should be employed to measure skin exposure to metals? (2) What is an acceptable skin exposure limit to metals using the construction industry, where there is a high prevalence of occupational skin exposures, as a test environment?