The American Conference of Government Industrial Hygiene also known as AGCIH is a charitable scientific organization that assists the working community by providing critical information on hazardous materials and the dangers they pose to health and environments. This information is distributed in the form of Threshold Limit Values (TLV’s) for chemical substances and Biological Exposure Indices (BEI’s) both of which have separate committees that are in charge of creating the documents. The ACGIH also writes a monthly peer reviewed journal and puts on conferences/seminars.
Having existed for over 80 years, there have been over 600 chemical substances and physical agents documented in their well-known TLV’s and over 30 Biological Exposure Indices made. These documents serve as guidelines in the industry world to alert the people coming into contact with these substances about the limits of exposure that are considered safe. However, the documents should only be interpreted by those who are trained to do so.
The TLV and BEI committees are given a Notice of Intended Changes (NIC) by the ACGIH every year to go over and determine if something needs a proposed alteration. Once the paperwork is completed, a yearlong process ensues where the change must not encounter any mishaps while also having enough evidence that this new document is clear to be put into place permanently (for the time being). After this year period, the committee presents its proposal to the ACGIH for final approval. During that year process there is a four-month timeframe where you are able to make comments about the proposal if there is a disagreement. This helps ensure that all the bases are covered for information as somethings might have been missed.
