Occupational Health and Safety Act, 1993 (Act No. 85 of 1993)

Regulations

Regulations for Hazardous Chemical Agents, 2020

Annexures

Annexure 3 : Hazardous Chemical Agent Guidelines

Guidance on medical surveillance and biological monitoring

Biological monitoring

Setting occupation exposure limits

Purchase

40.	OEL-RLs and OEL-MLs are proposed by the Standing Technical Committee No. 7, (TC7), reviewed by the chief inspector, approved by the Advisory Council for Occupational Health and Safety and promulgated by the Minister.

41.	For both OEL-MLs and OEL-RLs, as listed in Tables 2 and 3 of Annexure 2, the intent is to provide a level of minimum protection for all workers in the Republic.

42.	An OEL-ML is typically assigned to an agent with serious adverse implications for the health of workers exposed to the agent. Such effects are related to an agent being a carcinogen, sensitiser, teratogen or mutagen. However, those with lower orders of potency may not be assigned an OELML.

43.

The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) threshold limit values (TLVs) and biological exposure limits (BEIs) represent a scientific opinion, which are health-based values where exposure at these limits does not create an unreasonable risk of disease or injury. The TLVs and BEIs are established by committees that review existing published and peer reviewed literature in various scientific disciplines. These disciplines include occupational hygiene, toxicology, occupational medicine and epidemiology.

44.

The primary method for setting an OEL is to double the ACGIH TLV. This provides a uniform and systematic method that considers the principle of reasonably practicable, including both health risk and socio-economic impacts. Guideline values such as the ACGIH TLVs and NIOSH RELs consider only health risk and not socio-economic impacts, so it follows that these are not comparable to the OEL-RL and OEL-ML.

45.	For exposure to agents that are predominantly associated with mining operations, consideration will be given to align OEL-RLs and OEL-MLs with the Department of Mineral Resources. An example is setting of the OEL for silica.

46.

With the extensive number of OELs and industry processes, it is beyond the resources of TC7 to consider all socio-economic impacts on industry as well as the range of use of the OEL within industry. To mitigate this risk, TC7 may request interested or affected parties to submit substantive evidence to TC7 for consideration of a change to the OEL.

47.	The final OEL-RLs and OEL-MLs will form a combination of the outcomes of paragraphs 42, 43 and 44.