The permissible exposure limit (PEL or OSHA PEL) is a legal limit in the United States for exposure of an employee to a chemical substance or physical agent. For chemicals, the chemical regulation is usually expressed in parts per million (ppm), or sometimes in milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3). Units of measure for physical agents such as noise are specific to the agent. Permissible exposure limits are established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Most of OSHA’s PELs were issued shortly after adoption of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act in 1970, and have not been updated since that time. Section 6(a) of the OSH Act granted the Agency the authority to adopt existing Federal standards or national consensus standards as enforceable OSHA standards. Most of the PELs contained in the Z-Tables of 29 CFR 1910.1000 were adopted from the Walsh-Healy Public Contracts Act as existing Federal standards for general industry. These in turn had been adopted from the 1968 Threshold Limit Values (TLVs®) of the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH®).
A PEL is usually given as a time-weighted average (TWA), although some are short-term exposure limits (STEL) or ceiling limits. A TWA is the average exposure over a specified period of time, usually a nominal eight hours. This means that, for limited periods, a worker may be exposed to concentration excursions higher than the PEL, so long as the TWA is not exceeded and any applicable excursion limit is not exceeded. An excursion limit typically means that "...worker exposure levels may exceed 3 times the PEL-TWA for no more than a total of 30 minutes during a workday, and under no circumstances should they exceed 5 times the PEL-TWA, provided that the PEL-TWA is not exceeded." [1] Excursion limits are enforced in some states (for example Oregon) and on the federal level for certain contaminants such as asbestos.
A short-term exposure limit is one that addresses the average exposure over a 15-30 minute period of maximum exposure during a single work shift. A ceiling limit is one that may not be exceeded for any period of time, and is applied to irritants and other materials that have immediate effects.
See also[edit]
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
- Recommended exposure limit
- Threshold Limit Value published by ACGIH
References[edit]
- ^ "437-002-0382 Oregon Rules for Air Contaminants" (PDF). Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division. Retrieved 30 January 2014.
External links[edit]
- OSHA - Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs)
- Permissible Exposure Limits – Annotated Tables (Permissible Exposure Limits – Annotated Tables)
- 1988 OSHA PEL Project Documentation: List by Chemical Name Available from NIOSH
- ACGIH website ACGIH website
- Workplace Environmental Exposure Limits (WEEL™) Values available on-line through The Occupational Alliance for Risk Science - Workplace Environmental Exposure Levels (WEEL)™