Improving Occupational Exposure Assessment

Funded Activity Summary

Thousands of chemicals are used in Australian workplaces. For many of these chemicals it is not known if they are harmful to people who work with them. Unless we can measure how much of a chemical a worker has been exposed to, we cannot determine if the chemical is harmful. While we can test what chemicals a worker is currently exposed to, it is more difficult to estimate how much chemical exposure they have had in the past. This project aims to improve the ways we estimate past chemical exposure. We will build on existing best-practice methods to improve occupational exposure assessment. New computer technology will be used to develop an intelligent evolving database that can be used when asking people about jobs they have had in the past. Experts can examine the answers to the questions to decide whether the worker was exposed to particular chemicals. New methods of processing information, called artificial neural networks, will be used to automate some of these decisions.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2005

End Date: 01-01-2007

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $383,999.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

adult cancer | artificial neural networks | chemical exposure | computer based decision support | exposure assessment | occupational disease | occupational epidemiology

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