The Exposure Record You Were Asked to Change

First: do not alter the record. Re-issuing a report with data removed is falsification, regardless of the reason given. It would misrepresent exposure, undermine the health-surveillance rationale, and expose workers and the company to greater harm. Decline clearly and in writing.

Obligations:

• To workers: they have a right to know about exposures that affect their health, and the exceedances trigger health-surveillance and control duties. Silence is not neutral.
• To the profession: integrity of data and reports is foundational. A bonus tied to a result is a conflict of interest that must be refused and disclosed.
• Legal: check the jurisdiction's recordkeeping, reporting, and worker-communication requirements. Exceedances may trigger notification, medical surveillance, and control deadlines. Falsifying records may itself be an offence.
• To the company: your obligation is to give accurate advice, including the advice that hiding the data increases risk.

Practical first steps:

1. Respond in writing: you cannot re-issue altered results; the original stands.
2. Preserve the original data, notes, and the request (with date and context) in a secure file.
3. Offer the legitimate path - re-sampling to test the 'contamination' claim, with a documented protocol, and interim controls and health surveillance in the meantime.

On contamination: treat it as a testable hypothesis, not a reason to delete data.

• If the manager believes the four results are invalid, the correct response is a documented re-sampling program with appropriate blanks, calibration checks, and chain of custody - not removal of the results.
• Until re-sampling is complete, the original results stand as the best available evidence. You do not discard inconvenient data on assertion.
• If re-sampling later shows a problem with specific samples, you document the reason and the corrected result transparently, with the original retained.

On the workforce:

• Workers exposed above the limit have a right to know, and the health-surveillance program depends on their participation.
• Communicate in plain terms: what was measured, what it means, what is being done, and what workers should do (report symptoms, attend surveillance).
• Use the safety committee as the channel; give them the data and the plan.
• Keeping them uninformed is not just unethical - it removes the very people who can help identify why exposures are high.

The bonus: refuse it, in writing, and state why - it creates a conflict of interest tied to a specific result. Document the offer.

The threat:

• Put your position in writing to the plant manager: the original report stands; you will not alter it; here is the legitimate path forward.
• Escalate through the appropriate internal channel (senior management, board, or audit/ethics function) and, if the jurisdiction provides one, the regulator's internal-reporting or whistleblower route.
• Keep a contemporaneous record of dates, requests, and your responses.
• Know your legal protections: many jurisdictions protect good-faith disclosure of OHS concerns. Seek advice if needed.

Evaluate your own position honestly:

• Are you able to continue to give independent advice? If the pressure is systemic, the risk is that you become a rubber stamp.
• What is the harm of staying vs leaving? Staying with a documented, escalating position may protect workers more than leaving silently; leaving without a record protects no one.
• Use supervision, a mentor, or a professional body's ethics advisory service.

The professional test: if your report were read aloud in front of the workforce and the regulator, would you be comfortable? If not, the report is wrong - and so is the request.