8261198 Comparison of French and selected international occupational exposure limits

<h3>Objective</h3> Occupational exposure limits (OELs) are often used to interpret workplace measurements to chemical agents. However little guidance is available on how to deal with agents without OELs. Therefore, we assessed the coverage and values of selected lists of OELs relative to those in France to develop guidance for assessing chemical risks in French workplaces <h3>Material and Methods</h3> We selected lists of predominantly health-based OELs published by four organizations – ACGIH TLVs and OARS-WEELs (USA), MAK (Germany), and JSOH (Japan) – along with the current list of French OELs comprising 557 agents. We first assessed the presence or absence of agents across each list. We then used linear models to compare the ratios of French OEL values to those in other lists, accounting for year of adoption of the French OEL (before or after 1990). <h3>Results</h3> Overall, OELs for 1096 agents were found, with 539 not present in France. While no agent featured simultaneously across all lists, 114 were present in four lists. WEELs had the highest proportion of agents not shared with any other list (73%). 32 entries were unique to France (e.g. 2-naphtylamine, benzidine) with OELs dating mostly from the 1980s. On average, French 8-hour OEL values adopted before 1990 were twice higher than those proposed by other institutions, whereas OELs adopted after 1990 tended to be similar. Spearman correlations in 8-hour OEL values between the lists ranged from 0.89 to 0.93. <h3>Conclusion</h3> The four lists of published OELs selected can provide valuable information for risk assessments for agents not covered by French regulations, and for agents with older OELs that do not reflect the current state of the literature. <h3>Funding</h3> Internal funding from the INRS.