Safety & Health - Industrial Hygiene

PPG's Industrial Hygiene process is one that anticipates, recognizes, evaluates, communicates and controls potential exposure to chemical, physical, and biological agents to prevent occupational illness and disease in its operations.

PPG manages an industrial hygiene (IH) program that:

A PPG EHS professional is affixing monitoring equipment to an operator to collect an industrial hygiene sample at the Tianjin, China plant.

• Establishes global requirements for the management of occupational health.
   
• Evaluates occupational exposures to chemical and physical hazards, including noise, to ensure a safe and healthy work environment.
   
• Implements a global in-plant chemical hazard labeling process.
   
• Provides information and training about workplace hazards and appropriate handling procedures for using chemicals in the workplace.
   
• Implements controls to reduce occupational exposures to chemicals, including:
   
  • Material substitution
     
  • Engineering controls such as enclosing the process or using local exhaust ventilation
     
  • Reducing the exposure through job rotation
     
  • Providing personal protective equipment such as gloves, respirators, safety glasses and protective clothing.

PPG takes a proactive approach to managing workplace hazards and complying with regulatory requirements. In addition, PPG has established global requirements in areas such as hearing conservation, exposure monitoring, respiratory protection, ventilation, hazard communication, and hazardous chemicals in laboratories.

Annually, PPG’s American Industrial Hygiene Association accredited industrial hygiene laboratory analyzes more than 8,000 samples collected by trained facility IH coordinators, with over 35,000 analytes, from 145 locations worldwide.

PPG conducts comprehensive training globally about its Industrial Hygiene process including, hazard recognition, sampling
methodologies, and hazard control.

PPG’s Industrial Hygiene sampling results are communicated to employees and captured in an internally developed central database.

PPG developed and implemented a global, internal hazardous chemical labeling system to communicate the health, flammability, and reactivity hazards of chemicals.

PPG utilizes American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists Threshold Limit Values (TLVs®) to establish internal permissible exposure limits. Recently, the TLV® for crystalline silica was reduced by 50% and PPG is evaluating its operations to ensure compliance with this new exposure limit.