Laboratory Risk Assessment : Genial Genetics

iPassport QMS manages risk assessment through COSHH records linked to reagents. The COSHH records provide information on whether a substance may cause harm.

Regulatory agencies such as the HSE identify substances that cause harm to laboratory employees. Staff of pathology laboratories often have prolonged or frequent exposures to chemicals which necessitates having a risk assessment associated with each SOP they perform. The exposure assessment provides an estimate of how much of a chemical or substance a group can inhale, ingest, or absorb through the skin. Long-term exposures to chemicals are assessed by environmental exposure studies. These studies estimate the amount of the substance in the environment, then estimate the amount of exposure to determine tolerance.

Exposure assessments consider: how long a person has been exposed, whether the exposure was continuous or intermittent and how the person has been exposed, inhalation, ingestion, or absorption through the skin. An exposure assessment takes into account the uncertainties present, which are included in the substances MSDS. The toxicity assessment step looks at how much of a substance causes can cause different types of harm. The risk characterization step combines the information on toxicity and exposure to describe exposure limits when performing a SOP. The risk assessor analyzes the sum total of information from the information provided to develop the best possible judgment of risk. This cumulative assessment provides an estimate referred to as a risk assessment. The final risk assessment is an overview of both the entire process of estimating risk - problem identification, exposure assessment, toxicity assessment, and risk characterization as well as the estimate itself. HSE Guidelines for occupational risk are set as the standard on the system but these can be fully customised by the user to their own risk guidelines.