To prepare for this class:

A. Please read the Sampling Strategies Project descriptions and come to class with any questions you have about them. Before next week you need to decide on a Project Group of 2-3 students that is different from your in-class Working Group. You should also decide whether you will work on the occupational or environmental scenario.

B. Download the Sampling Strategies and Compliance handouts, and bring them to class:

• Sampling Strategies Notes
• Compliance

C. Download and review the following article, so that you are prepared to answer questions in class. Please read the INTRODUCTION and MATERIALS AND METHODS carefully, and TABLE A1 at the end.

• Kromhout H, Symanski E, Rappaport SM. A comprehensive evaluation of within- and between-worker components of occupational exposure to chemical agents. Ann Occup Hyg. 1993;37(3):253-70 (get here).

D. You have already been introduced to sampling strategies for compliance in SPPH535. Here I want you to answer the following questions, which concentrate on the issue of homogeneous exposure groups (HEGs) or similarly exposed groups (SEGs).

1. What is the goal of compliance sampling?
2. What is the purpose of having HEGs or SEGs in compliance sampling?
3. How are HEGs or SEGs defined?
4. How do Kromhout et al. define a “uniformly exposed group”? What is the _BR_0.95? According to Table A1, what proportion of the 165 groups (jobs within factories) are uniformly exposed?
5. What is the problem if job groups are not homogeneously exposed? What can be done about it?

E. As part of your in-class Working Group, please consider the following scenario:

• There is a regional park in an agricultural area that has a small, freshwater lake with multiple large and small beaches. It is a popular family destination in the warmer months. Dogs are not technically permitted, but people bring them anyway.
• Your organization is going to be responsible for designing a sampling plan to ensure that it is safe to swim in the lake. If you find that it is unsafe, the lake will be closed to the public until the safe threshold is reached.
• This is your first brainstorming meeting about the project. Take some time to consider the following questions :
  1. What will you measure?
  2. How will you measure it?
  3. When should sampling begin?
  4. How often should sampling occur?
  5. Where should samples be collected?
  6. How many samples should be collected?
  7. When should the beach be closed?
  8. When should the beach be re-opened after closure?
• This is an short learning exercise. You will have an hour in class to discuss the project with your colleagues, the instructor, and the TA — you will not have time to design a complete sampling plan!
• Under typical working conditions your team would discuss the project, decide on what further information was needed, and assign action items for the next meeting. You should go through a similar process in SPPH567, but your action item for our next class will be to read a short paper about one sampling strategy others have devised for a similar situation. We will discuss these questions in the context of that paper first thing next week.

F. Please use one of the following programs to calculate “geometric” confidence limits around the arithmetic mean Exposure Level in our course dataset:

• IHSTATn2000 from the AIHA, as extended for N > 50 by Terry Boygo of WorkSafeBC (make sure you enable macros, and follow instruction in yellow box in file)
• ProUCL from the US EPA