Algorithms for estimating personal exposures to chemical agents in the Semiconductor Health Study

For exposure assessment in a series of epidemiologic studies of semiconductor industry workers, estimates of potential personal exposures to selected chemical agents were developed using a set of algorithms. A worker's total exposure to each agent was defined as the sum of task scores for each task using that agent. Task scores were calculated as the intensity and frequency score for each task, modified by a factor indicating degree of presence of the target agent and a process-specific emission factor representing degree of emission control present for that process. The algorithms used multiple sources of information to generate an exposure score for each worker-process-agent combination. Exposure scores were then placed into ordinal categories of exposure (0-3) for use in the epidemiologic analysis.