The Nordic Expert Group, an inter-Nordic project for assessment of occupational risks

Risk management and risk control within the occupational environment are individual national issues in the Nordic countries. Within the area of occupational exposure limit setting there is, however, some collaboration. As an internordic project the Nordic Expert Group for Documentation of Occupational Exposure Limits was started in 1977, in order to develop scientific criteria documents. The documents are used by the five national regulatory authorities as a common scientific basis for setting national occupational exposure limits. In risk management in the Nordic countries the Nordic Expert Group deals with the scientific issues and the regulatory authorities deal with the transscientific issues, taking economical aspects and technological feasibility into account. The setting of occupational exposure limits is thus an administrative (or political) concern and the limit values are norms rather than limits between hazardous and nonhazardous concentrations. The work by the Nordic Expert Group exemplifies the fact that the scientific part of risk management can be preferentially performed on an international basis.