There are about 200,000 chemical substances distributed worldwide, and about 17,000 substances are distributed in Korea. Along with the rapid growth of the chemical industry, chemical accidents have constantly occurred, and systematic management is required to use chemicals safely and reduce risks. Korea has changed from a hazard-oriented management system to a risk management system that considers exposure, and is managing chemicals by enacting the Chemicals Evaluation and Registration Act called K-REACH and the Chemicals Control Act. K-REACH requires manufacturers and importers of 10 tons or more of chemicals per year to submit risk data including exposure scenarios describing handling, exposure control, and management methods throughout the entire process of the chemical, and submit it at the time of registration.
Since the 1960s, the government's fostering policy and corporate investment in Korea's Information and Communications Technologies industry have been active, and the electronics and ICT industries, including semiconductors, are rapidly developing. However, as the absence of chemical substance management at semiconductor Factories continues, chemical accidents in semiconductor Factories are occurring frequently. Semiconductor manufacturing consists of various processes, and since each process has risks due to the use of various chemicals, it is necessary to identify chemical exposure information in semiconductor Factories. Unlike actual measurement methods that are subject to time and space constraints and economic costs, the use of exposure assessment models is relatively quick and can solve problems of cost, time, and manpower. In this study, the exposure assessment of chemicals used in semiconductor Factories is driven by the exposure assessment models ECETOC TRA and ChemSTEER, and the two models are compared to suggest a direction for chemical safety management in semiconductor Factories.
ECETOC TRA can be applied for a 'clean room', a closed space, which is a special feature of the semiconductor Factories, to the model, but it needs to be supplemented because the use of the process is very limited. In addition, since it is a Tier 1 exposure assessment model, it can be estimated as a conservative value than the actual exposure to chemicals in semiconductor Factories. ChemSTEER has ESD in the semiconductor workplace in the model, so it can produce results closer to the actual value than ECETOC TRA, but it is difficult for workers to use and requires a high level of knowledge to interpret the results, so it may be less used in actual semiconductor Factories. In addition, an exposure assessment model that does not reflect the RMM may make it difficult for workers to find the RMM they actually need. It is thought that an exposure assessment model with high field usability should be developed while supplementing the disadvantages mentioned in this study or reflecting the specificity of semiconductor Factories.