NEBOSH

Do – Controlling workplace health issues (International)

UNIT ID2:
For: NEBOSH International Diploma for Occupational Health and Safety
Management Professionals

General note about this sample assessment

Please note that this is a sample assessment, designed to be illustrative of the tasks learners will
face. It is therefore not a complete paper; the scenario is much shorter and it does not contain
as many tasks as a live paper will have. A full paper will have 300 marks available.
This sample also uses supporting documents. We would provide (or give references to, if readily
available from authoritative internet sources) supporting documents and expect learners to be able
to select and use relevant information from them).

Scenario extract
You work for an old, well established chemical company that manufactures specialist paint products. These
paints are made by mixing many different raw materials together in large (25,000 litre) cylindrical mix tanks. One
of the main products, Saxum42, contains a high proportion of Raw Material A (RMA), which is supplied in 25kg
plastic sacks. To add RMA to the Saxum42 mix, a worker stands on a platform and rests a sack over the lip of
an open hatch at the top of the mix tank. Using a knife, they cut open the end of the sack and empty the contents
into the tank. The empty sacks are piled up on the platform next to the hatch.

There is a local exhaust ventilation (LEV) hood directly above the hatch and you have seen that sometimes the
worker loses their grip, and the nearly empty sacks get sucked up into the LEV system. It can be difficult to tell
whether this affects the LEV performance because the workplace is quite noisy, with lots of other manufacturing
operations going on close by. Workers wear thick rubber gloves, cotton overalls and rubber boots. Workers also
wear ‘dust masks’ because the LEV can end up creating a lot of turbulence and sucking RMA upwards towards
the worker’s upper body.

Supporting documents:
- Safety Data Sheet (SDS) for RMA. In this example, the SDS would indicate, amongst other things, that
RMA is a very fine powder form of silica with a significant component of respirable crystalline silica (RCS).
Also shown would be the actual percentage of RCS.
- Air monitoring results for RMA. A table of air monitoring results for given time frames, indicating, for
example that they are static measurements (rather than personal).
- EH40 – workplace exposure limits. This is an example of national exposure limit standards; regardless
of your country-specific exposure limit standards, please use these for the purposes of this exam
- SDS for RMB. We’d show that RMB is a concentrated slurry version (say, 50%) of RMA.

Task 1: Use and control of substances hazardous to health

1. Based on the scenario and relevant supporting documents, evaluate the existing arrangements used for
the addition of RMA to the Saxum42 mix tank against ‘Operational Control Measures’ (Chapter 6 of the
International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Code of Practice ‘Safety in the Use of Chemicals at Work’) and
‘Prevention and Control’ (Chapter 4.3 of the ILO’s Code of Practice ‘Ambient Factors in the
Workplace’). (15)

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Task 2: Workplace exposure limits

2. You have contracted an air monitoring service to take some measurements of the concentration of RMA
near the tank hatch.

Using relevant supporting documents, calculate any relevant Time Weighted Average (TWA)
concentrations and comment on their significance. (15)

Task 3: Substitution of hazardous substances

3. You are reviewing the process and, amongst other things, have suggested some changes to the Saxum42
production process. You are considering one of the following options:

Option 1: adding RMA using an enclosed screw-feeder from a bulk storage container.
Option 2: replacing RMA with Raw Material B (RMB) and using a dedicated pipeline or flexible hose from
a separate bulk container.

Based on the scenario and relevant supporting documents, discuss the merits and limitations of these two
options. (20)

The above are just a range of questions we might ask. Alternative/additional questions could also explore the
issues of LEV performance, manual handling, noise etc. in an integrated way.

© NEBOSH 2021 ID2 sample v1 May 2021 page 2 of 2