Hard surface criteria and sampling – Case study PFAS

In certain situations, chemicals may be inadvertently deposited on surfaces within buildings which workers may come into contact with.

This presentation will cover the derivation of health-based hard surface swab criteria for per- and polyfluoroalkylated substances (PFAS) which can be used to judge the potential importance of this exposure pathway.

A general discussion will also be presented on the manner in which PFAS surface swab data can be collected and things to watch out for when interpreting the confidence in the analytical results.

Speaker:

Ms Tarah Hagen, MSc, DABT, FACTRA

Technical Director – Toxicology & Risk Assessment, SLR Consulting Australia Pty Ltd

Tarah is a certified toxicologist and fellow of the Australasian College of Toxicology and Risk Assessment (ACTRA) who has over 14 years’ experience in conducting screening and detailed human health and ecological risk assessments for a variety of industries and government. Included are industrial emissions, contaminated land and water, consumer goods and food. She has written and co-written numerous major reports, which have been influential in shaping Australian health risk assessment methodology and policy decisions in relation to environmental issues. Included are guidance documents for undertaking risk assessments, complicated risk assessments dealing with a variety of emissions to the environment, deriving the scientific basis for workplace exposure standards, interpretation of biological monitoring results for chemical exposures, toxicological reviews on various chemicals in relation to work and public health and safety, as well as research into clearance and distribution of per- and poly-fluorinated alkylated substances (PFAS) in livestock. She has also acted as an expert witness in a number of legal cases involving chemical emissions.

She is currently Vice President of ACTRA and has been actively involved with ACTRA for over 10 years. She is a ministerial appointed member of the Industrial Chemical Environmental Management Standard (IChEMS) advisory committee and regularly teaches University Masters students in the fields of toxicology and epidemiology.