Noah Swart

Blog Topic

TWA – What Is It?

Mr. Moss

Warning Hazard

  When working, with toxic hazards, safety should always be your number one concern, and the number one concern of your employer. As the hazardous waste and chemical management field grows, more and more restrictions are being tightened to promote a safer workplace. Specifically, the chronic effects workplace toxins can have one ones health. In the past when coal mining was a booming industry profits were put ahead of laborers health and because of this a bill was passed called Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. This bill created the federal organization of OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Administration which was tasked with overseeing the health of all laborers in the United States workforce. OSHA later went on to pass multiple guidelines to help prevent dangers and protect the overall health of all United States worker.

  One of these guidelines is called TWA, or Time Weighted Average which was an overall guideline for toxic exposure in the workplace. TWA is the process used to calculate the exposure a worker will receive in a typical eight hour, work day. This exposure is measured in hopes of preventing any big chronic exposures, for instance, black lung in long term mine workers or radon exposure in house workers. TWA takes into account all possible levels of toxins or substances in the area at the time spent, this is done through a typical mathematical exposure calculations. A health worker may ask that a laborer wear a device to measure the amount of a chemicals in the air.

TWA Balance

  After a health worker has the right data required to make an accurate estimate of the quality of work guidelines would typically be used to determine what forms of protective measures should be used. TWA is alike in other toxin prevention methods such as Permissible Exposure Limit or PEL for short, but it differs in its formulaic way of dividing the sum of time, spent with levels of substance, present to create an easy but effective prevention method.