Research progress on occupational health risk assessment methodology

Occupational health risk assessment has been highly regarded in recent years. Domestic scholars have applied some international risk assessment methods to different industries and have further optimized these methods. On this basis, China's first national occupational health risk assessment standard has been established. This paper mainly introduced domestic research on the application of qualitative occupational health risk assessment methods such as Romanian model, Australian model, International Council on Mining & Metals (ICMM) model, and Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Essentials (COSHH Essentials) model, quantitative occupational health risk assessment methods such as US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inhalation risk assessment model, toxic gas hemisphere diffusion model, and physiologically based pharmacokinetics (PBPK) model, semi-quantitative occupational health risk assessment methods such as Singapore model, fuzzy mathematical risk assessment model, likelihood exposure consequence (LEC) method, and occupational hazard risk index assessment method, as well as the globally harmonized system of classification and labeling of chemicals. It also briefly introduced the optimization and comparison of occupational health risk assessment methods as well as the occupational health risk assessment standards in China, such as Classification for hazards of occupational exposure to toxicant, Classification of occupational hazards at workplaces, and the quantitative, qualitative and semi-quantitative risk assessment models of Guidelines for occupational health risk assessment of chemicals in the workplace. The paper proposed that future research ought to widely apply occupational health risk assessment methods to key industries to assess their applicability and conduct quantitative comparative studies, optimizing studies, and modeling studies.