Andre Winkes (Msc) is a certified Industrial Hygienist and Safety Engineer with more than 25 years of experience. He is working as a senior consultant at ArboUnie the largest consultancy in this field in the Netherlands. Andre Winkes has a lot of experience as a consultant in the chemical and process industry. He is also working at the ECTS (Expert Centre of Chemical Risk Management part of ArboUnie). At the ECTS he is working on the Stoffenmanager, Pimex movies and the relation between changing behavior and safety.
He is also part of the organization committee of the Dutch Annual Industrial Hygiene Conference. Furthermore he is a speaker on national and international conferences.
If exposure can be visualised the hazard/risk there will be better understanding by workers of risks and hazards. PIMEX is a video exposure monitoring technique which aims to make invisible hazards in the work environment visible and in this manner facilitate the reduction of hazards in workplaces. The name PIMEX is an acronym from the words PIcture Mix Exposure. It implies that the method is based on mixing pictures, in this case from a video camera, with data on a worker’s exposure to different types of agents. In the Netherlands Pimex is has been proven to be a very successful tool for risk communication. At the moment more than 160 films are available and used by the government and many different industry organizations. Most of them were placed on the internet, some of them where used for making training cd’s or used in Stoffenmanager, a control banding tool for chemical substances at the workplace. Pimex films are now available on exposure to noise, chemicals, vibrations, physical load, hygiene and heat stress. Presentations on different occasions resulted in international interest in the Dutch Pimex films. However the Dutch language was a major problem to share the videos. Due to a grant of the Dutch Industrial Hygiene Association (NVvA) 10 Pimex films on different topics are already translated in Spanish, English and Chinese. These films are free available on the web and are widely used over the world.
Results
At the moment a large set of Pimex films are being translated in Spanish. The goal of this translation is to share and to spread knowledge on good practices around the world. The films will be free available on the web and will become available during this conference. In this presentation the method and the latest developments on Pimex will be discussed. Some of the translated videos will be shown as an example
Lessons learned
Pimex can be used worldwide to train workers to use control measures and PPE in the right manner. It will enlarge the knowledge of risks and can be used to motivate workers and management to use safe working procedures, to identify hazards and visualize good practices. Pimex has been proven as a strong, easy and cheap tool for risk communication.